


I'm Not Faust (But It Was Still A Bad Idea)

by Morbid_Hatter



Category: Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Bucky Barnes is Bad at Feelings, Canon-Typical Violence, Clint Barton Needs a Hug, Clint Barton is Bad at Feelings, Clint Barton is a Train wreck but Bucky loves him anyway, Clint Has Self-Worth Issues, M/M, Mentions of past prostitution, WHBB2k16, WinterHawk Big Bang, but not a Supernatural crossover, demon!Bucky, elements borrowed from Supernatural, so does bucky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-03
Updated: 2016-09-03
Packaged: 2018-08-12 17:44:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 29,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7943452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morbid_Hatter/pseuds/Morbid_Hatter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Germany, 1944, Steve Rogers falls to his death and Bucky is not handling it well. Help comes in the form of a deal: his soul for Steve's life.<br/>Fast forward almost sixty years to Prague in 2002. Clint Barton, just a year into his SHIELD service finds himself watching his handler and friend, Phil Coulson, dying before his eyes. Thanks to an old story, Clint decides desperate times call for desperate measures and he summons a Crossroads demon to make a deal.<br/>In all his years as a Crossroads demon, Bucky has never met another person to bargain their soul for someone else's life like he did. Determined to figure out what makes Clint tick, Bucky decides to stick around; and in the meantime, the boys form a friendship that is a match made in Hell.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'm Not Faust (But It Was Still A Bad Idea)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the WinterHawk Big Bang.  
> (This wasn't supposed to explode like this, but such is life.)
> 
> Art by the lovely and talented Torii-Storii can be found here: http://torii-storii.tumblr.com/post/149870083899/well-arent-you-rude-you-ruined-my-nice
> 
> Note that the event that takes place in Madrid, Spain 2004 was an actual terrorist attack (obviously I changed the organization responsible to fit canon) and does contain bits of violence and a little bit of Hurt!Clint so skip that part if either of those things would be upsetting to you in any way. 
> 
> And speaking of canon, I threw away all of Phase 2 MCU (nothing after 2012 exists) and had to tweak the parts of Phase 1 MCU that I decided to use. I decided to mash together comic Clint with a little bit of movie Clint to make a Clint Barton hash of this and that which is my headcanon Clint.
> 
> Cheers!

_**I’m Not Faust (But It Was Still A Bad Idea)** _

_Outside Munich, Germany, 1944_

A siren echoed through the crisp night air from Munich, but they came too late. The damage had already been done and there was no way to fix it.

The Axis and Allied Powers had seen fit to engage in a battle in the skies over Munich, Germany because of it’s location and importance to the German army. Munich, a large city near the Alps was not only home to the Luftwaffe, but also to many manufacturing plants that were crucial to Hitler’s armies. However, built into the side of the Alps mountain range outside of Munich was a base of operations to Hitler’s side project dubbed Hydra.

Sergeant James Barnes of the 107th, best friend of Steve Rogers aka Captain America, had been rescued from another Hydra fortress some time before; he had since made it his duty to fight beside Steve as he attempted to take out as many other bases as possible. James, better known as Bucky, was part of a group of men called the Howling Commandos, a group he was proud to call himself a member of because of their cause: to rescue any and all prisoners of Hydra and eliminate the threat of the operation.

Even with this pride, Sergeant Barnes couldn’t rationalize the needless death he had just witnessed. He enlisted in the US Army as soon as he turned 18 and had worked hard to earn his rank before he had been shipped across the sea to fight against the Axis powers when he had been stationed in Germany. But this - this was something he couldn’t seem to wrap his head around. He had witnessed death and destruction during his service, it was an effect of war, but what he had witnessed hours before was not something he would ever be okay with.

Logically, he knew that Captain America was a figurehead for troops to rally around and to boost morale wherever he went. This made him important to the cause but didn’t necessarily mean he was any more important than any other soldier serving under Old Glory. Right now, however, logic wasn’t at the forefront of Bucky’s thought process. Right now, the only thing Bucky could think of is why they had received no warning about the incoming planes or the bombs dropping onto anything important to the German Army. He still wasn’t positive if their caravan hadn’t been noticed, or if it had been mislabeled as an instrument of the Axis Powers, or if they were deemed a threat by their own allies.

In the end, he decided, it didn’t matter. No matter the cause of the destruction, the consequences won’t change. He would still have to witness his best friend fly off the side of a treacherous mountain road. Bucky hoped he was okay; but knew in his gut that serum or no, Steve had not survived his fall.

He paced back and forth outside of the camp on his watch. He could see the fire in the middle of their makeshift camp every time he turned to march back the way he had come. Several times he took out a folded picture of himself and Steve when they were boys. The photo was battered but it was the only thing he had left of his best friend.

Slowly, the hour got later and later and the fire dimmed until just the coals at the bottom of the pit were visible. The later the hour got, the more he knew there was no point in watching for Steve to come back. In a fit of anger her threw the old photo to the ground and tried to bury it with the heel of his boot. The cloud cover blocked out what little light the stars would have given off on an otherwise moonless night. The roads out this far away from Munich were quiet at such a late hour wasn’t surprising but it was causing the fine hairs at Bucky’s hairline to raise as though he were being watched.

He sighed heavily and shook his head before he turned away from their camp to continue his pacing only to almost collide with a woman. Not just any woman, he noted after a few disorienting seconds where he was sure her eyes were as red as her hair, but once he was able to refocus he realized it had only been a trick of the light. ( _What light?_ a traitorous part of his mind supplied unhelpfully.)

“Well, hello soldier,” she purred in a slightly accented voice. She was taller than most women Bucky knew; even when she was barefooted they stood almost eye to eye. She was wearing a soft looking white dress that flowed around her knees even though she was still and there hadn’t been any wind in hours. “You look like you’re looking for something.”

Bucky choked on a laugh. _Something? Ha!_ “Do you need something, miss?” he asked trying to remember his manners in the presence of a lady, especially one who gave him the shivers and not the kind pretty girls normally gave him.

She laughed, an eerie but melodic sound that seemed to resonate through Bucky’s entire body. “No,” she answered with another laugh. “But you do.” She took a few quick steps so that she was right up in Bucky’s space and placed her small hand on his chest. “I can feel it here” she continued and from this close, Bucky could smell something faintly resembled rotten eggs.

“Well, yeah,” Bucky answered feeling like he was missing some key part of their interaction. “But it’s not something anyone can do anything about, miss. Now, can I help you find your way anywhere?”

She smiled. It wasn’t pleasant. She looked like a cat who had eaten the canary and washed it down with the cream. It was a dangerous curl of plush, red lips. She circled him slowly, as if she were appraising a new car. “I’ve seen inside your heart, Bucky. I know what you want.”

Bucky, who had been attempting to follow her while she circled him so that she stayed in his line of sight (she was dangerous and it was instinct to try to keep her in front of him). “How did you know my name?”

She didn’t answer, but her smile grew infinitesimally larger. “That doesn’t matter, soldier. What matters is that I can give you what you want.”

It was a cool evening in late April, but Bucky could feel his body temperature drop several degrees regardless of the heavy jacket he wore over his uniform, and his throat clicked as he tried to swallow around a sudden lump. This woman wasn’t human; he could feel it down in the same place in him where he knew that Steve was dead. She may have once been human, judging by the fact that she looked like a woman in her early twenties, but there was no way that she retained any bit of humanity in her. He took a deep breath before he asked the question he already knew the answer to. “In exchange for what?”

She rocked from the balls of her feet back to her heels in a move that seemed too juvenile to come from someone who’s eyes seemed ancient and otherworldly. “Nothing you’ll miss,” she answered smoothly. “And even if you did, isn’t it worth it for the good Captain?”

“So my soul for Steve? How do I know you’ll keep your end of the deal?”

Her eyes flared crimson and she squared her shoulders as if she was preparing for a fight. “Done,” she said simply with a vague gesture towards the eastern edge of camp. “Now seal the deal or Captain Rogers will never reach camp. I’ll send him right back to where he fell and you’ll have to live with the knowledge that you let your best friend die again.”

Bucky stopped himself from reaching out and throttling her; even though she was obviously not a human, she was still a woman and his mother would rise from her grave and smack him upside the head if he even so much as twitched in the direction of a young lady with intent to injure. “You don’t have to manipulate me. I just wanted to make sure you weren’t going to stiff me before you steal my soul.”

“Steal?” she hissed, sounding insulted. “We’re making a deal. That means you’re willingly trading it for my services.”

He heaved a sigh and glanced once more across the camp to where she had pointed. Steve would kill him if he ever found out what happened and he didn’t know if he would be able to look at him without confessing; but he couldn’t handle not seeing Steve one more time to make sure the chucklehead would be okay.

“Going once. Going twice,” she taunted with a wicked look on her beautiful face.

“Wait! Just let me say goodbye!”

She jerked to a halt, her toes landing back on the ground with a soft thud. “I may be a demon, but I do have some sympathy. You’ll have plenty of time to see him and settle your affairs before I come to collect what’s mine.”

Bucky didn’t think that sounded like he was getting much time at all but any chance to say good-bye was something he couldn’t turn away. He nodded his consent. “Alright, let’s get this show on the road.”

She adjusted her posture and rested her hand on his shoulder to balance herself in her new position. “It only takes a kiss,” she whispered. Up close Bucky was able to finally figure out what exactly the rotten egg smell was; now that he knew she was a demon he understood that the smell was sulfur. It wasn’t nearly as potent as he expected but it was still unpleasant. “Pucker up, soldier.”

The kiss wasn’t nearly as filthy as he was expecting from a demon. He didn’t know much about any paranormal history or even Christian lore, but he knew enough to know that demons weren’t to be trusted or known for being particularly virtuous. That knowledge aside, this kiss was rather chaste as if she could sense his reluctance to kiss someone he didn’t know. He had kissed his fair share of dames in his time, but he had always formed some kind of emotional attachment to them before kissing any of them. Regardless of any misconceptions he had about demons, the kiss was done and the deal was sealed. “Your friend should show up in a few minutes. You had better be ready to greet him. Time is ticking.”

She turned as if to walk away before simply vanishing into thin air. He could hear the cheers and shouts from the camp as Steve crested the low hill and came into view of those who were still awake regardless of the late hour.

 

_Prague, Czech Republic, 2002_

There were several things Clint Barton was certain of. One: that he was hands down the best marksman in the world which was due to his incredible eyesight (and ability to do complex physics/geometry equations in his head) and years spent in the circus learning how to make impossible shots. Two: he hated Communism with a passion of one thousand burning suns. And three: that Phil Coulson was _not_ going to die today. All of these things were related, but Clint was feeling generous about his worth today so he wasn’t going to get too specific.

Luckily for Phil, these three things added up to one incredibly angry sniper. Clint’s hands were steady while he assessed the situation around them. They were in an alley behind their hotel where Clint had been backed into while trying to get to Coulson who had called for backup over their comm unit. He had been too late to stop the rogue gunman, but he _had_ been able to deal with him before he stepped out of the alley into the street where he would’ve been able to blend into the panicked crowd. None of this added up to what Clint would consider a successful mission, even if their main target had been eliminated before the chaos had started.

Unfortunately, Clint knew Coulson was bleeding out too quickly for Clint to get help, even if he could remember enough Czech there was no way to explain away their situation, not as heavily armed as they were (and there was no way in hell Clint was losing his bow when the area was crawling with threats).

“Hey Coulson, remember last year when you shot me in the thigh? I promise this isn’t payback. I got back here as soon as I could. I promise I didn’t let you get shot on purpose.” Clint was babbling and he knew it, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself. His cool from just a few minutes ago was gone as the adrenalin that flooded his system burnt away.

“Relax, Barton. Evac will come. I’ll be fine and I’ll only make you do paperwork for a week instead of a month.”

If there was one thing the circus taught him it was that there was no cause for unnecessary stupidity. Clint knew this, and he knew Coulson knew this. That meant that it was a platitude, something for Clint to hold on to as he waited for the inevitable. He let out a strangled laugh in an attempt to keep the mood light, an attempt that fell short of its mark but neither would admit to it.

Clint stood up from his crouched position behind the dumpster that was doubling as their very shoddy cover and snuck down to the edge of the shadow to see if he could get a glimpse of their evac team but saw no recognizable people making their way through the crowd. At this rate, he knew they weren’t going to make it. There was no safe way for Clint to move his handler on his own with a rapidly bleeding shoulder wound (and wasn’t that just the shittiest luck ever? the only potentially vulnerable point on Coulson’s entire torso thanks to his Kevlar vest). He was most definitely going to file a request for outsourcing their tactical gear from now on. StarkTech was so much better than the shoddy stuff they were stuck with.

After his useless scan of what he could see of the street from the relative safety of the shadows Clint sat down next to Coulson. He took his jacket off and rolled it into a makeshift pillow. There wasn’t much else he could offer for comfort with a shattered collar bone and no exit wound to speak of. Clint allowed his head to smack against the hard concrete behind him as he heaved a tired sigh. “You know, I never thanked you for the second chance, Coulson.” Clint bit hard on his lip. “I knew you were given the kill order. I just wish -” he cut himself off and ran his shaking fingers through his dirty hair.

A heavy hand landed on Clint’s knee. “You’ll never have to, Barton. I saw your potential. I know you have heart, you were really bad at hiding it.”

Coulson stopped at started coughing; loud, wet coughs that brought up too much blood for Clint’s comfort.

“Dammit, Sir, there’s gotta be _something_ I can do.” Clint would deny he was begging by this point. He wanted to be useful but his life so far wasn’t about saving people’s lives but ending them. He was able to patch himself up enough but the end result was a star-shaped scar on each side of his right thigh and half a dozen poorly healed ribs.

Coulson didn’t answer. It was instantly apparent that he couldn’t because he wasn’t getting enough air. He was quietly gasping around a lung full of blood. Instead, Coulson raised his one good hand and finger-spelled “L-E-A-V-E. F-I-N-D. S-A-F-E-T-Y.”

“Sorry, Sir. I don’t understand your terrible attempts at Sign. You’re just gonna have to try harder later.” Clint attempted a cheeky grin fell flat. “Just rest, Coulson, I’ll keep an eye out,” Clint promised even as his eyes stayed focused on his handler and only once ventured away from the grey color of Coulson’s face. He kept track of the minutes in his head until Coulson’s intense blue eyes closed and didn’t open again. It hadn’t even taken 15 minutes.

He curled his hands around his biceps in a mock hug and tucked his head into the cradle of his arms in an attempt to comfort himself and to keep himself from screaming in frustration. It wasn’t often anymore that he felt helpless and he had forgotten how debilitating it could be.

Regardless of the panic he could feel rising up in his chest, Clint took stock of everything he knew he could do. He glanced around and found a piece of broken glass. He quickly picked it up and carefully put it in front of Coulson’s face. When it didn’t fog up from an exhale Clint knew there wasn’t anything evac was going to be able to do if or when they fought their way into the heart of a panicked Czech city. It was a pity that his Czech wasn’t as good as his Polish (or Russian; or French; or the other dozen languages he was almost fluent in). While he could say basic phrases in Czech (“Where is the bathroom?” and “Can I pet your dog?” were the only two examples he felt one hundred percent comfortable using) he was almost completely fluent in Polish thanks to Bianka the fortune teller that traveled with Carson’s back when he was a boy.

Bianka had taken an interest in Clint and seemed determined to keep him away from the shadier aspects of the circus. While he hadn’t understood why as a boy, now he understood why she looked at him with such a deep sadness when he babbled happily in Polish about how Trick was going to teach him how to shoot. She seemed to make it her personal mission to teach him whatever she knew about reading people, and basic things such as sewing and cooking. His favorite things however, were not the lessons, but the stories she brought over with her. Her family had survived the second world war by fleeing Poland for British-ruled Africa before the Nazi’s invaded Poland in 1939. She herself had been born outside of Poland since her family had never gone back; but she knew all the stories out of the “Old Country” and even some from her short time in Africa.

And now he was letting himself get lost in memories which wasn’t going to help his situation. He needed to focus on something other than the stories he had been fed when he was young.  
Now, he knew her fortune telling was all bullshit and cold reading, but back then he had believed all the voodoo nonsense…

...Voodoo.

While he didn’t necessarily believe in any religion, there was a story that stood out in his memory. A man bartering his soul for riches sealed with a kiss from a beautiful witch-woman.

Clint jumped to his feet and tugged Coulson’s SHIELD badge from under his handler’s body armor. It wouldn’t be good if someone came across his body and identified an American spy organization on foreign soil. “Sorry sir,” he apologized even though he knew it was pointless. “It can’t hurt. And if it doesn’t work no one will ever know,” he muttered to himself. He took his phone out of his pocket and sat it down next to Coulson in case the evac team was using it to track their location.

He tucked Coulson’s ID badge in his vest next to his own to keep it safe as he slipped into the crowd and away with a silent promise to return regardless of success or failure (the latter being the obvious end to his admittedly mad venture). “I’ll be back soon, sir,” he vowed under his breath while he kept his eye out for landmarks to so he would be able to get back to where he had left Coulson’s body.

It wasn’t a long walk before he found something that could be useful to him. The small park was almost deserted with the rest of the city told to stay indoors to stop the crowd to grow larger than it already was. With just a little bit of searching he found an intersection in two dirt paths.

Bianka had told him the story as a allegory for never devaluing hard work, but Clint wasn’t using this for himself to get anything out of it. He was going to use it to save the only person to ever value him for something other than his flawless aim since his mama died when he was a little boy.

Regardless of her original intentions, she had been oddly specific on the details of the story. So specific that Clint believed it was either a complete fabrication or one hundred percent fact. It was probably bullshit, and he probably looked ridiculous kneeling in the dirt in the middle of a panicked city; but he officially had zero fucks left to give. He was desperate. And, as they say, desperate times call for desperate measures; and he had only been this desperate once before, and it wasn’t a time he liked to think back on.  
He ignored his fingernails tearing from the layer of pebbles that marked the shaded pathway. Clint dug under his tac vest and removed his own Identification card. He didn’t have a bone from a black cat but if his botany skills were even the slightest bit accurate, the small flowers that were lining the east-west trail were what he thought they were, he had his Yarrow. Hopefully his intent would be enough to get this to work…if it wasn’t completely bogus, that is.

He paced the four cardinal directions several times, each time getting more and more discouraged. He stopped over the loosely packed dirt where he had buried his identification badge and the flower. “Fuck this,” he whispered and dug his ruined fingernails into the soft flesh of his palms hard enough to leave red crescent moon shapes. The sting was enough to distract him and keep from falling apart like he wished he could; but in the middle of a panicked city (even removed from the action as he was at the moment) was not the place to lose his cool. No, that would have to wait for Evac, whenever that showed up. For now, he had to get back to Coulson and hope the alley hadn’t been compromised.

Locating the Saint Vitus Cathedral by the tall spires, he retrieved his now dirty badge and tucked it back next to Coulson’s before he stood and began to make his way back the way he came.

“Well, aren’t you rude? You ruined my nice relaxing vacation by summoning me and then you leave. Kinda makes a guy not want to corporate.”

Clint felt his stomach tumble and his heart skip several beats. “No way,” he said, unable to keep the awe out of his voice. He turned slowly and came face to face with the least demonic demon he had ever imagined. Not that he spent a lot of free time imagining what demons looked like; but this guy definitely wasn’t what he would have expected. For one, his eyes weren’t red or black, nor were his pupils slits like a snakes or any other descriptor he had ever heard. Secondly, was his height. Now Clint would admit he was taller than average (6’3” according to his official SHIELD physical) and because of this, the man standing in front of him was about a head shorter than him. He seemed practically tiny, and it was hard to be intimidated by anyone he had to look down on to make eye contact with. Lastly, he was dressed in regular street clothes so that someone who passed him on the street wouldn’t have ever been able to pick him out of a crowd. The only thing that screamed otherworldly was the slightly insubstantial look of his left hand. Clint was willing to bet that if his eyesight wasn’t perfect he would have missed that detail. (He was also willing to bet that more than just the demon’s hand was that strange dense smoke-like substance, but he wasn’t really in a betting mood so it was a moot point.)

The demon smiled. It was a slow, sleepy smile, like something dangerous was waking up. “Are you quite done checking me out, Agent? Or do you prefer Clint? Maybe even that adorable moniker? Hawkeye, isn’t it?”  
Clint didn’t want to ask how it knew all about him, it made him want to question notions like free will and destiny; and he _really_ wasn’t in the mood for an existential crisis. Instead, he went with his second choice: flirt. “Not yet. Can you turn around slowly? Gotta check out the assets, you know how it is,” he countered with a wink and a sly smile.

The demon laughed and clapped his hands together. And that was something else Clint was choosing to ignore for the time being. He was much too stressed out to figure out how something that he could see through could allow for a clapping sound. Whatever. He was a circus brat, he had seen a lot of weird stuff in his life. “Well, now that we’ve established I’m a catch, let’s get down to business, shall we?”

Clint nodded. “I want to make a deal.”

The demon’s smile grew a fraction. “I’d gathered that much for myself, thanks. Now, I think I know what this is about, but indulge me.” The demon waved him on to speak with a flashy twist of his real hand.

“My soul for someone’s life. Can you do that?” he asked, sounding much more confident than he felt.

The demon nodded slowly and tilted his head like a bird watching its prey. His previously grey irises flared crimson as he studied Clint. He felt a icy chill rush down his spine, much like when he felt someone trying to sneak up on him. Almost as soon as the color flashed, it disappeared to show the much more human-looking grey again. The demon raised one dark eyebrow in surprise. “What makes this guy so special? Do you love him or something?”

Clint choked on a hysterical laugh. “Not romantically. He’s more like -” he paused, unsure how to word exactly what Coulson was to him. “It’s hard to explain. He’s not like a father figure, but he is in a way. I know that doesn’t make sense, but his life is worth so much more than mine.”

The demon who had previously looked like he was going to laugh at him stopped and the smile slipped away and his eyes seemed to fade somewhere far away or long ago. “Fine. The standard is 10 years. I’ll bring him back and in 10 years you’ll join me. Or less than that if you’re not careful. And judging by the scars I’d say it’s a safe bet that I’ll see you sooner than that. Regardless, your mentor-friend lives with no memory of dying - I’ll throw that one in for free since speaking from personal experience, it’s really difficult to explain that away. Do we have a deal?” By the end of his spiel the far-away look was replaced by a small frown as if he disapproved of Clint’s choice despite himself.

“That’s fine. Just fix this. I screwed up and he shouldn’t pay for it,” Clint said through clenched teeth. He didn’t need the approval of the demon in front of him - he just needed to know he did everything in his power to save the man who saved him. If it wasn’t for Phil Coulson he would probably be dead or so morally compromised that he wished he were dead, and neither option was something he wanted for himself.

“Last chance to back out,” the demon warned even as he invaded Clint’s space. When Clint didn’t stop him, the demon weaved his (very solid feeling) spectral hand around the collar of Clint’s tac vest and pulled him down so that they were eye level. From here it was impossible to miss the sulfur smell that emitted from the demon’s entire being.

“So do I get to know your name or am I gonna have to make up some ridiculous name for you. I’ll call you Claude. Or maybe Augustus. How about -” the demon cut Clint off by kissing him. The surprise was enough to momentarily stun Clint into silence. He had been expecting a little warning before the deal was sealed. _Oh well_ , he thought, _it either happens now or later._  
As soon as Clint started kissing back the demon pulled away slightly. “You can call me James,” the demon whispered before disappearing into nothingness.

\-----

Bucky watched Clint run his thumb over his bottom lip before he turned and ran back towards his fallen companion. He had to admit he was a little curious as to what made this Phillip J. Coulson so special he was worth a boy’s eternal soul. In his time as a crossroads demon, having taken Natalia’s place so she could retire to a nice desk job after several millennia (time was screwy in Hell he had found out after his death), he had yet to come across someone to sell their soul to ensure the life of someone else.

Natalia said it was rare for people to do selfless things in exchange for Hell. And that was why he followed Clint back to his superior who’s life he had yet to return. There was no other reason, he told himself. It wasn’t because he felt oddly connected to the only other person he had ever met to bargain away his soul for a friend the way he had after Steve had fallen.

He was very bad at lying to himself.

When Clint reached the mouth of the alley and saw that Bucky’s end of the bargain had yet to be completed he stopped dead and spun around. “What the fuck? Where are you, you son of a bitch? You have to fix this! That was the deal!” Bucky felt a strange pang in his chest the longer Clint kept talking, his voice finally cracking when he said, “that was my only chance.”

“Relax, Clint,” he felt himself whispering even though in the In-Between his voice wouldn’t carry to him. Bucky closed his connection to the scene in front of him and instead focused on shuffling through the line of recently deceased before finding the brightly burning soul of one Phillip Coulson before it could make it’s way off to it’s final resting space (and that was a lot of Steve memorabilia in that particular afterlife. It was mildly hilarious if he was being truthful). “Sorry, Phil old buddy, you can’t go just yet,” he told the ball of light before he sent it rushing back to its body.

It was curiosity that brought him back with the soul to see their reunion. Clint sounded sure when he said he wasn’t in love with the middle-aged pencil pusher look-alike but he knew that humans tended to lie even when there was no reason to. But the way the blond’s eyes lit up when Phil opened his eyes was love even if he hadn’t been lying about not being _in love_. It was a look he hadn’t seen directed at anyone since Steve looked at him after he found him strapped to a table in that Hydra fortress in Austria. It was a look that said ’I’d do anything to keep you safe,’ and ’you’re my best friend,’ and a number of other things that were now foreign to Bucky and had been for almost 60 Earth years.

He continued to watch as Clint welcomed Phil back to the land of the living with a wry smile on his face. Bucky was fascinated to see the shift in Clint’s mood from somber and desperate to a forced joviality for the sake of his friend. And when Coulson had asked Clint how he had managed to save his life, Clint answered “I sold my soul.” But it was said with a smile and a wink so Coulson took it as a joke.

He watched as Clint’s shoulders sagged and he ran his thumb across his bottom lip once Coulson turned away from Clint to make another call.  
  
He would continue to watch Clint. It was like a thread connected him to this particular deal. He wanted to know why someone else would damn themselves like he had. It was maddening not knowing something. He’d be damned again if he didn’t figure out what made this kid tick…what it was that made them so alike; so desperate to be around someone they would give away the only thing they have of any worth to ensure one person’s survival.

 

 

_Madrid, Spain, 2004_

 

Clint nearly fell of the roof of El Pozo station when Bucky appeared. It had been almost two years since Clint made a deal with Bucky but scaring him had yet to lose it’s charm for Bucky. “What’s the word, Hawkeye?” he asked as he casually leaned over so he could look over the ledge and watch the trains coming and going.

Having recovered quicker than normal, Clint returned his focus to some point far off that Bucky couldn’t quite see and removed a small ear piece. “A.I.M. sold some weapons to a terrorist cell and now SHIELD has to clean up the mess. What else is new?” he asked with a small quirk of his lips.

“Don’t want your guard dog to know you’re talking to a boy?” Bucky teased and bumped his knee lightly against Clint’s hip.

“Don’t want my handler knowing I’m talking to a demon to whom I sold my soul for his life. A demon who follows me around like he had nothing better to do,” Clint countered but was still smiling so Bucky knew he wasn’t too annoyed. “What do you want, James?”

Bucky sighed and regretted introducing himself as James. It made him feel like he was talking to his sister who had been the only person still alive who still called him James before he had died. But it was safer, he reasoned, with Clint being so close to a Captain America scholar to keep his anonymity. While Clint was probably aware that Steve Rogers had a friend names James ‘Bucky’ Barnes, James was a more common name and thus safer for Clint to know than Bucky. It wasn’t that he didn’t want Clint to know they had more in common than both selling their souls, it was that he didn’t want Clint to relay any knowledge about what really happened to Bucky Barnes and why he died. Clint tended to babble when he got bored, or scared, or captured (and yes, he found _that_ out the hard way. Clint had been tied to a chair and had spouted off every random fact that he knew while he was being beaten waiting for his team to come rescue him), and he didn’t want the entire world to know that the war hero James Barnes had sold his soul and turned into a demon. It was an insult to his memory. “Can’t I just check up on you every once in a while without getting the third degree?”

Clint snorted inelegantly before his eyes narrowed marginally and he slipped his comm unit back into his ear. “I have eyes on a target, Coulson. Requesting permission to take the shot. Repeat. I have a clear shot. Should I take it?”

Bucky resented being ignored but was also used to it when Clint shifted into work mode. He didn’t like the shift, it was like something dark took over the usually brightness of Clint’s entire being. It was a reminder that Clint was marked and that brightness would eventually be snuffed out like his own had been. _Maybe that’s why I keep coming back_ , Bucky thought to himself as he watched Clint set up his rifle (all while muttering darkly about being forced to used a gun over his bow). _It’s like watching the process I didn’t get to go through._

Unlike the deal Bucky had offered Clint, he had been given no such time limit and had only had enough time to set his affairs in order before he had been killed in a fire fight. Or, that had been the official story. In reality, the bomb going off was only a distraction so that the Hellhound wounds wouldn’t show.

Natalia was thorough like that.

So since he hadn’t had the time to lose himself to the darkness, he watched with a kind of morbid curiosity as it slowly happened to Clint. And he could admit to himself, he was trying to keep that from happening as much as possible. He hadn’t had a hard time adjusting to Hell sine his soul had been so bright and untainted upon admission, and he was hoping to grant the same entry to Clint when his time came in a little over 8 years.

Lost in thought as he had been, Bucky almost missed the danger not 10 feet away from their hiding place. Had he not been musing about his own misfortune he may have been able do something to stop the explosion before it had happened. Instead, he did the next best thing and grabbed onto Clint and forced him through the In-Between and away from the worst of the blast that had detonated right under their noses. “Are you okay, Clint?” Bucky asked when he brought them back to Earth a safe distance from the set of explosions going off all along the railway. “Clint?”

When Clint didn’t answer Bucky released his grip on Clint’s bicep and instead gently lifted his head by pushing his chin up. “Talk to me, buddy.”

Clint blinked slowly and began to shiver as if he had gone into shock; which was entirely possible Bucky reasoned. The In-Between was not a place for the living; it tended to do funny things to them, but the situation had called for a gut reaction and not careful planning. Clint’s eyes were wide but focused as always so it wasn’t shock.

“You gave me a bit of a scare there, buddy. I know I shouldn’t have pulled you in between worlds like that but it’s the fastest way to travel and I had to get the squishy mortal out of the way. You understand, right?” Bucky was rambling slightly, a habit he had picked up from Clint, but he couldn’t help it; the words just kept coming no matter how hard he tried to stop. Clint wasn’t responding to anything he was saying but was directing his laser focus on Bucky’s mouth as if he were trying to absorb the words that were spilling quickly from his lips.

Bucky heard the crackling of static over Clint’s ear piece and then noticed that the small comm unit was dangling from the collar of Clint’s tac vest where it had fallen out from the blast - the blast that had apparently blown out Clint’s eardrums if the light blood flow from his ears was any indication.

“Sorry,” he said slowly and clearly before he snatched the device and held it up to his own ear. “Um, hey. Your guy here was hit by part of the explosion. I moved him to safety. We’re about two hundred yards from the main entrance.”

There was no answer on the line but Bucky was sure Coulson was on his way. If there was one thing he had learned since he started keeping tabs on Clint, it was that Coulson always came for him. Their relationship had transcended that of handler and specialist that they were apparently supposed to maintain, and instead morphed into a strong, boundless friendship.

And he was right. Not three minutes later a large black van with a stylized eagle on the side skidded into view and the back door popped open to reveal Phil Coulson with a gun drawn and aimed in between Bucky’s eyes. He kept his phantom left arm out of sight and hoped that the stench of burning buildings was enough to cover the lingering smell of sulfur that followed Bucky like a haze (apparently it was something that was noticeable when he stood close to someone, according to Clint). “Easy there, Tiger,” Bucky said in the most soothing tone possible. He knew the bullet wouldn’t do any damage to his body but that left a lot of tricky questions to answer and would probably get Clint into a lot of trouble; not to mention himself when he went back to Hell since he wasn’t technically supposed to be Topside unless he was making a deal.

Coulson lowered the gun a small fraction so that it was aimed below Bucky’s chin; in prime location to move to shoot him in the head or the heart with a minor twitch of the wrist.

“Status report,” Coulson barked. It took Bucky half a moment to recognize that even though Coulson was still looking at him, he had been talking to Clint - it had been a gut reaction to answer the command, a reaction he was only just able to repress.

When Clint didn’t reply Coulson seemed to come to the conclusion that Bucky and his threat level shouldn’t be his major focus at the moment. He wasn’t going to admit to feeling marginally better without a .45 aimed at his person. Without either of the agents looking at him any longer, Bucky slowly backed away from the scene and moved out of sight before disappearing.

He hated leaving Clint like that (something he refused to look into) but he knew there was nothing he could do about it; Coulson would be able to force Clint to medical and they would take care of him to the best of their abilities. The blast had unfortunately ruined Clint’s already shitty hearing, Bucky noted. He wished, not for the first time, that time-travel was possible and that he could go back in time to destroy Howard Barton before he could damage his boys and kill Clint’s mother because of drunken stupidity.  
_Perhaps_ , he thought with a cruel smile, _it’s time to pay that asshole a visit._ It was a weak distraction, but it was something he needed to do for his own selfish need to keep himself from doing something ridiculous like reappearing and giving Clint a hug or something else entirely less demonically appropriate.

 

 

_Fairbanks, Alaska, 2005_

 

November would never be one of Clint’s favorite months, especially when he had to trudge through knee-deep snow after being perched in a tree for 7 hours for _no reason_. He especially hated not actually getting to do the thing he was brought out to the middle of nowhere to do. While Hydra decided it was too cold in Fairbanks, Alaska, SHIELD had no such issue and made him sit still in rapidly dropping temperatures while he waited for absolutely nothing. It was a pity their intel didn’t warn them that the arms deal was a bust. Coulson had finally called the op and ordered him to move to the safe house and wait for the team to come collect him as soon as the snow stopped.

Well, that had been the plan when he dropped from his perch. But now, hours later with snow rapidly falling from the sky and winds howling through the trees as he followed his GPS out to a cabin in the middle of a clump of trees. Fairbanks was civilized, for fucks sake! Why they couldn’t just keep a house or apartment in the middle of the city so he could have basic amenities? Was this some kind of torture? Clint often found himself wondering if Fury was punishing him. He hadn’t told anyone about selling his soul to save Phil, but sometimes Clint wondered if there was an X-Ray under Fury’s eye patch. It sure as hell seemed like he could read all of Clint’s dirty secrets as if they were written on his face.

Right now, however, the only thing he wanted to focus on was getting to the cabin that SHIELD considered to be a ’safe house’. He could maybe start a fire and read the 6th Harry Potter book which sat in his backpack unread even though he had bought it at a midnight release party back in July. Again, Clint was convinced that Fury knew he had snuck away from the Triskelion’s med bay against orders to buy the book and had sent him on ops back to back so he wouldn’t have time to read it as punishment. Well, fuck him. Clint got smart and just brought it with him.

Yes, carrying around an extra pound or two didn’t seem like that big of a deal a few miles back, but now his bones hurt from the cold and the few extra pounds was weighing heavily on his back and shoulders.

He pulled his hat further down to protect as much of his head as he could and tucked his hands under his arms and trudged forward before he lost his balance and pitched forward down a small hill into a shallow (but still frozen) pond. “Fucking great,” he sputtered when he pulled himself out of the broken ice. “I’m gonna die in the middle of nowhere, all alone, with no idea how this stupid series ends,” he whined. Luckily for him, he had lost his pack and bow on his tumble down the hill so his gear had remained dry and unbroken. Unluckily though, he knew he had at least sprained his wrist when he had tried to catch himself.

As if summoned by Clint’s whining, James appeared at his elbow with a blast of heat and sulfur. He was dressed, not in his usual leather jacket, but in a dark blue wool coat that looked as if it was out of a World War 2 movie. The change in wardrobe was disconcerting for all of five seconds before his hands were itching to take the coat for himself. It took him an even longer time to realize that his hands were itching and burning and that it was spreading up his arms and crawling through his core.

He had just enough time to be impressed and slightly turned on by watching James lift him into a fireman’s carry as if he weighed nothing (and it would’ve been hilarious to see since Clint was 6 inches taller than James) before his vision blurred and faded to black.  
  
He came back to consciousness on an incredibly uncomfortable couch with James’s wide grey eyes inches away from his face. “Hey handsome,” he slurred before he felt the blessed tug of unconsciousness pull him under again.

But the demon that had adopted him seemed completely against letting Clint sleep. A strange rush of energy flowed from his head down to his feet, making him _very_ aware of the tingling in his limbs and the oddly sluggish beating of his heart. “Wake up, you asshole!” James yelled too close to Clint’s aid.

“Oww,” he whined, and clapped his frozen fingers over his equally frozen ears. “That kills, man. These things are shit at picking up a lot of noise from far away but everything up close is amplified a million times.”

James snorted inelegantly. “Hyperbole is not attractive, Hotshot,” James taunted before he began to dig through Clint’s bag. He would have felt annoyed at the invasion of privacy if it had been anyone but James, instead, he was just annoyed when he found the big green book and began flipping through the pages. He decided to deal with his feelings later when he was alone, and instead managed a feeble lunge in the direction of _Half Blood Prince_ but missed.

“Don’t read any of it out loud! I haven’t managed to get a chance to read it yet.” He reached for it again and this time managed to wrap his hand around the spine before he had to let go and clutch his definitely broken wrist.

He must have started to black out again because after a very long blink James was in his face again, and he looked to be yelling. Yeah, he had most definitely blacked out, his hearing was fuzzy as hell even with the aids, a sure sign that he had passed out. “’m cold,” he complained and reached for a very itchy and incredibly ugly blanket but was gently reprimanded by a concerned looking demon.

“Sorry, kiddo, you have to get out of these wet clothes first,” James said, and handed Clint a clean long-sleeve shirt and sweatpants before he turned around to give him some privacy.

Clint smiled and started to unfasten his tac vest with his right hand (it was times like this that he was so thankful that he was ambidextrous), it was obvious that James was uncomfortable but he wasn’t going to make the situation more awkward by parading around naked like he usually would. Instead, he threw his vest and spandex undershirt at the back of James’s head and laughed at the indignant squawk James let out before he whipped around with a ‘I will _murder_ you’ look on his face. Luckily, Clint had this look directed at him by much scarier men than James, even though the others weren’t all-powerful demons. Regardless, the look had lost a lot of its heat when James’s frown started to twitch upwards and the grey of his eyes were swallowed up by his pupil.

 _Interesting._ Clint filed that reaction away and slid his shirt over his head to break eye contact. “So,” James said, loudly and awkwardly. “What’s with the kids book?”

Clint scowled and reached, once again, for his book, and pouted when he missed once again. “Excuse you. This series is a masterpiece.” He wanted to slap himself in his stupid face when he felt a nostalgic look settle over his face. “I had a really hard time reading when I was a kid. I thought I was stupid for a long time.” Here, he ignored James’s snort, choosing to preserve their friendship and not shoot the demon in the face. “Anyway, I started to read them when Mrs. Carson bought me the first book when I was 10. I didn’t get much in the way of real school when I was a boy so this was a close as I could get. Turns out I’m severely dyslexic and that’s why words never make sense.”

James nodded and flipped to the beginning of the book. “So what house are you in? Please don’t say Gryffindor or our friendship is over.”

Clint saw the out for what it was and chose to let go of the heavy subject of his terrible childhood and instead focus on James and his wicked smile.

“Hufflepuff,” he said and watched the surprise cross his companions face. “Expecting something else?”

James made a face at Clint and then looked at the book and back at Clint as if trying to piece it together. “Yeah, I guess I can see that. It’s totally when we get along. You know a Slytherpuff friendship could take over the world.”

Clint laughed before he began to cough as if his body finally caught up to this situation. Clint realized that he had never managed to get his boots and wet pants off and immediately started to feel the cold seep back into his body. He wasn’t shivering. This was definitely bad. “Jimmy, old buddy, I think -” he didn’t get to finish his warning before he fell over.

The next time he woke up he was using James’s chest as a pillow if the gentle rumble of his low-pitched voice was anything to go by. He was much warmer and only felt his face heat up more when he realized he was now dressed in sweatpants and his boots were sitting next to a fire to warm up.

“You’re a fucking boy scout,” he praised mockingly, but being cuddled up next to a demonic furnace had its advantages at the moment.

James hummed and turned his head so that he was looking out the window behind Clint’s back. “The sky is really pretty right now.”

 _Alright, I’ll bite_ , Clint sat up as far as his sore body would allow before he flopped back down so that his head was resting on James’s arm. “Am I concussed or is the sky green?”

“You’re telling me you’ve never seen the Northern Lights? You’ve been everywhere and you’ve never seen it?” James sounded astounded and slightly confused.

“You don’t tend to notice the beauty in the world when you’re concentrating on taking out the bad,” Clint answered with a shrug. “And what’s with using ‘pretty’? That can’t be in the Hell approved vocabulary.” James flicked him on the arm for his sass. It was a strange feeling - the phantom arm was definitely real enough to touch but was still in the realm of ‘not real’. _So confusing._

“You’re rather morbid when you’ve been hypothermic,” James teased. “It’s an interesting phenomenon, that’s all. It’s all about the particles from the sun reacting with atoms. I read about it when I saw them while I was making a deal in Trondheim and the sky was covered in these bands of green and purple. It was something I had never seen before.”

“Nerd,” Clint taunted but it was all in good fun. He was actually interested in what James was saying, not that there was anything new about that. James had seen and done so much since he took over as a crossroad demon that Clint was almost a little jealous; and maybe he looking forward to getting the same chance when he died.

James kept talking about the lights and all the different colors he had witnessed since his first time in Norway and tried to explain the phenomenon but managed to confuse Clint when he started to talk about electrons speeding up and slowing down (“I’m better at physics and geometry, you’re talking about the wrong subject”). But, Clint figured around hour three, that James was trying to keep him engaged because he was worried about him. It warmed the deep recesses of his heart to know that someone as gruff and growly as James could be was worried about his well-being. Eventually they both noticed a set of headlights coming through a gap in the trees.

“There’s your rescue. I’d better run before they notice me.”

Clint didn’t get the chance to say goodbye or to thank James before he disappeared back to wherever it was that he went whenever he wasn’t keeping Clint company on long and lonely ops out in the middle of nowhere. There was no trace of James when Coulson came through the door except for the faintest trace of sulfur which was mostly covered by the pine fire burning merrily a few feet away from where Clint was lying cuddled up in a mountain of blankets.

 

 

_Paris, France, 2007_

 

Bucky was being a creep and he knew it, but he was too excited to care. He was sitting on Clint’s wheeled computer chair and bouncing eagerly like a child on Christmas morning.

“Clint,” he called obnoxiously. “Wake up!”

Clint didn’t verbally answer, he just raised his hand in a one-fingered salute.

“Don’t be like that, bird brain! I brought you coffee and some éclairs straight from a lovely Parisian café called Carette. And if you don’t get up now, I’m gonna enjoy your birthday breakfast and you won’t get any.”

Bucky wanted to not be impressed by Clint’s accuracy but he couldn’t help it when he was barely able to dodge away from a pillow aimed directly at his face. “Nice aim, Hotshot.” He wanted to sound mocking but he failed spectacularly. Clint grumbled but removed himself from his nest of blankets and pillows. Clint didn’t allow himself many luxuries but his bed was a veritable fortress of comfort - especially since Bucky had figured out that Clint had a large collection of micro-fleece blankets he loved to cuddle with (even in June) and enjoyed adding to the collection every time he saw one he figured Clint would hate.

Clint sat up and let his hand close around his bright purple hearing aids. _Huh, no wonder he didn’t answer._ “So, birthday boy, I’ve managed to keep you from dying several times before your deal is up. That means I get to treat myself and you to a lovely day sightseeing. And since you happen to be on leave for the next week, you have no excuse to say ‘no’.”

Clint raised an eyebrow but didn’t disagree. Good, he was learning.

“Where did you plan on taking me to, then?”

Bucky made a show of pretending to think. He used his foot to spin the chair around while he tapped on his chin.

“Well,” he said, dragging out the single syllable as long as possible. “You said you’ve been all over the world, even France, but that you’ve never had the chance to see Paris. And let me tell you, it’s really disgusting. It’s practically reeks of love and other sticky things like that. But, since I like you for whatever reason, I’ve decided to be magnanimous and take you there myself.”

Clint actually looked surprised and shook his head as if he was checking to make sure his aids were working properly. “I’m sorry, how do you expect me to be able to pay for us to get to Paris on such short notice? The bad side of working for a shady government agency is that we don’t get paid all that well. I throw away a lot of my money on this stupid apartment.”

Bucky actually felt his jaw drop. Was he serious? “Are you serious? I’m a demon, remember?” He flashed his eyes crimson just to reiterate his statement. “Silly things like planes don’t hinder me from getting anywhere. Shit, how do you think I keep appearing whenever I want?”

Clint just shrugged and mumbled something along the lines of ’it’s a legitimate question most of the time,’ but got out of bed and stalked over to where Bucky was opening a bag of éclairs he had procured from one of the most expensive places he had ever seen (and he haunts Manhattan quite often thanks to Clint). “Just don’t tell me if you used your demon powers to get these,” Clint grumbled before he bit into his pastry and let out the lewdest sounding moan Bucky had ever heard in all his time alive and dead. “These are fucking fantastic.” After a pause in conversation while Clint scarfed down the rest of his breakfast and coffee where Bucky had to conjure up all the self-control he no longer possessed. Clint was able to make something as mundane as eating one of the most erotic experiences of Bucky’s un-life. _I’m never letting him near popsicles. This boy should come with a warning label._

“Alright, I’m sold. Let me get dressed and we’ll go.”

Bucky managed a nod and spent the entire time Clint was showering purposely not thinking about him wet and naked not 50 feet away. He stood up so quickly he almost knocked Clint’s chair over and started to pace back and forth in front of Clint’s ridiculous California King bed. He ran a hand through his long hair in frustration. He never lost his cool. He was the king of cool! Or, at least he was at literally any time he wasn’t around the human disaster disguised as the world’s deadliest assassin.  
_Do I have a type?_ Scary and dangerous he understood. When Clint shifted into work mode, he could be downright sexy with the raw power he possessed. Hell, anyone with (or without) a pulse could see that - his eyes got all intense and his body just seemed to radiate strength and agility; it was truly a sight to behold. Bucky had snuck a look at Clint’s bow one time and the draw, apparently 250 pounds, was not something he could have managed without some demonic help. Not that he would ever admit it to Clint.

But, back to his situation: _I have a type, and walking disaster is NOT it._ He was attempting to talk himself out of something that had been creeping up on him for a long time. Maybe it was the fact that Clint had absolutely no self-worth that had started his growing fondness for his favorite human; but that wasn’t the reason anymore.

He growled and let out a hissing breath through his teeth as he tried to center himself. He was NOT going to get anymore feelings involved in their relationship. Bucky hadn’t had a friend he could enjoy spending time around since Steve. He liked Natalia well enough, but he always felt as if she was keeping something from him and he didn’t like it. With Clint everything was out in the open; except his nasty, goopy, sugary _feelings_. Those he kept to himself. “Focus, Barnes,” he scolded himself and sat down heavily on Clint’s chair after he deemed he had done enough pacing.

Thankfully, Clint came out of his bathroom a few minutes later, effectively interrupting Bucky’s mental berating. He was going to let Clint enjoy his 23rd birthday without having to deal with Bucky’s stupid feelings.

“Finally ready to go, punk?” he teased as he jumped up again.

Clint smiled and nodded and took the hand that Bucky offered so he could pull the human into the In Between and out again in an empty alley with a good view of the Seine. Bucky could feel the excitement come off of his companion in waves. If something like this was enough to make Clint’s soul shine bright as the sun he’d make it his goal to do it as often as possible if Clint would let him. “Where to first, Hotshot?”

Clint started listing off every major tourist location and ended with the Eiffel Tower.

“Woah, hold the phone, kiddo. Slow down. Let’s just start with Notre Dame and work down your list.” He kept his hand wrapped around Clint’s wrist to keep him from running off and getting lost. Bucky didn’t trust him not to wander off and end up in Germany or somewhere else equally ridiculous.

After Notre Dame where Clint took several hundred photos of the gothic architecture, Bucky brought them over to Luxembourg Gardens (“Jardin du Luxembourg, James. Get it right.”) where they ate lunch among the flowers and other tourists and locals. Clint rambled happily in perfect French about whatever it was the girl in the pure white tennis outfit was talking about until she said something that made him stop and blush from the roots of his hair to the collar of his t-shirt. “M-Merci,” he stuttered out before waving goodbye and turning back to his sandwich.

“What did she say?” Bucky asked, curious as to what could shut Clint up so thoroughly. He wanted to use it too; it looked handy.

“Nothing,” Clint mumbled, not taking his eyes off of his lunch. “It’s not important.”

Bucky tried to disagree but a cold look from Clint stopped him. He’d leave it alone, only because it was his birthday.

“So when did you learn French?” he asked in a blatant change of topic.

“The circus had a lot of European immigrants cycle through. I always had a knack for spoken language, especially as a kid. Now, ask me to write anything I just said and I’ll have no idea what I’m doing, but I’m fluent or almost fluent in Polish, French, Russian, Italian, Spanish, Romanian, German, Swahili and a couple more. I can bumble my way through Arabic and most Asian languages.”

Bucky felt his jaw drop. His Hotshot had a giant brain for someone who played dumb about 90% of the time. “That’s incredible, Clint.”

Clint shook his head and blushed again. “Not really, I just have a knack for languages. It’s not like I can read any of them, but it’s damn useful for the spy business. That’s where I learned a lot of basic phrases in Mandarin and Arabic. Apparently it’s handy anymore,” he said with a shrug, still not looking Bucky in the eye.

They were quiet while they finished lunch and through the Place de la Concorde until Clint asked an older couple to take their picture in front of a fountain with an out-of-place obelisk in the background. “This is the spot where public executions were carried out, of course I want a picture here!” Clint called as he raced away with the camera held above Bucky’s head. He was sure that he would have ruined the photo had it been film instead of digital. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know what form the camera had captured and didn’t want Clint to see the real him for the first time on camera.

“Clint,” he warned but it was too late. Clint stopped dead and was staring at the image on his camera like he had never seen anything like it. Bucky pulled the camera down to his eye level and groaned. The goopy look on his face was only partially hidden by the glare caused by over-exposure thanks to his eyes flaring crimson at just the right moment. “Well, at least your not overshadowed by my extreme attractiveness,” Bucky managed to choke out, not nearly as convincing as he wished he would have sounded.

Throughout the rest of the day Bucky felt more and more relaxed around Clint despite the fact that he wanted to bone the archer against the Arc du Triomphe or in the elevator of the Eiffel Tower while they rode it to the top. He could admit his attraction to Clint, who was only made more attractive by his vast knowledge of foreign languages and history (he rambled off the entire history of the French Revolution while they toured around the city); but he refused to acknowledge that what he was feeling was anything deeper than a physical attraction. It wasn’t like he was able to fall in love anyway. And if he was feeling anything close to that very non-demonic feeling, it was because they were in the city of love and it was just rubbing off on him.

It had nothing to do with the way Clint looked under the moonlight as he gazed out over the city from the top of the landmark. Absolutely nothing.

He kept up his denial all the way back to Clint’s apartment until he had to physically stop himself from kissing Clint goodnight after dropping him off at his door. It was a perfect day and he almost ruined it and their entire friendship because he couldn’t separate what he was feeling from the atmosphere of Paris after an entire day in the city. “Good night, Hotshot,” he said with a wave before he forced his being through the In Between to Down Below where he intended to stay until he could squash any feelings before they manifested themselves and ruined his friendship with Clint.

 

 

_Budapest, Hungary, 2009_

 

Clint sat down heavily on the edge of the full sized bed in the hotel room he and his team were currently occupying. Or, team was probably too strong of a word. It was just himself, Coulson, someone out of the R&D department, Sitwell, and some high-strung newbie who’s name Clint hadn’t deemed important enough to learn.

Although his murder face was strong enough to rival James’s, he didn’t register on Clint’s radar since he had barely spoken two words on the flight over the Atlantic. And it had been a civi flight, too! Clint hated flying with civilians, especially when he had been packed into his seat by the window and his ‘companion’ had a seat in another row.

But that was neither here nor there now. His cover had been set up and now he was just waiting for his cue to go. The nervous little R&D guy had fitted him with a pair of glasses that recorded everything he saw, and a pair of almost invisible in-ear aids that were itchy and made him long for his purple BTE’s even though they weren’t SHIELD approved gear.

“Phillllll,” he whined before flopping down on the bed with his arms crossed over his chest. “Why do I have to do the honey pot missions? It makes me feel like a prostitute.”

Coulson, who had heard this complaint a handful of times over the years, took his whining in stride. But, to his credit, he also gave Clint a once-over. “Does it make you uncomfortable, Agent? We can call in another team.” The little bit of frost that seemed to cling to him melted and he stood to close the distance between them. “Clint? Do we need to call it off?” he asked gently, with genuine concern on his face.

Clint sighed heavily. He knew it was possible to send in another team but they might miss this opportunity; and there was no saying another would come around for a while. This particular scum-bag was very good at his job and wasn’t in the habit of staying in one spot for longer than a day or two before popping up elsewhere months later. “No. I can do this,” he answered finally. “I’m just being childish. We’ve been planning this for months. But guys like this make me sick, Coulson.”

Coulson nodded, knowing not to continue discussing it aloud with others in the room. Clint, on his first seduce-the-bad-person mission had flat out refused before having a minor panic attack thanks to wonderful flashbacks of some of the less than savory things he did after leaving the circus in order to keep food in his belly. Guys like their new target took advantage of people who were in the same situation Clint had been in years ago, before he took up being a hired gun, and it made Clint nervous knowing he could have met the same fate as scum bag’s human trafficking victims.

Normally, SHIELD wouldn’t have jurisdiction over something as minor as a human trafficking ring, but when it crossed international borders as often as this guy did with almost no trace, governments had stepped aside and allowed an outside agency to clean up the mess.

Coulson began packing up his gear and unbuttoning the top of his shirt so he could fit in more with the crowd of people they were likely to run into. “I want us to rendezvous at 2300 hours at Action Bar. I expect you all to know what you’re doing.”

Clint waved his briefing packet in Coulson’s general direction instead of answering verbally. He could feel the hairs on the back of his neck rising which meant someone was watching him. And since everyone was focusing on Coulson, that left only one other being and he was eager to have a distraction for the next hour. He wasn’t looking forward to having to act like a dumb blond to get close enough to Melnyk to get him alone to gather the intel needed to disband his ring and take him out. It was a basic enough op, it just wasn’t his usual cup of tea. He was more used to being the eyes up high, not the eye candy; but as Melnyk was currently targeting young men who happened to share the same physical characteristics Clint possessed, he was going in as bait.  
He waited for James to show himself by busying himself with his downright ridiculous outfit SHIELD’s wardrobe people had come up with. Clint considered himself lucky that he was flexible regardless of what he was wearing because leather was _not_ the kind of material to attempt to be bendy in if you didn’t know what you were doing.

He came out of the bathroom to find James occupying the same place on the bed that Clint had been sitting during the pre-mission brief with his team. “So where’s your bow, bird brain? Or are they making you down grade to these little knives?” James asked while he tossed Clint’s boot knife (the only weapon he could carry in his ridiculous outfit) up and down.

Clint laughed and bent over to pull his boots. He shook his head to see if there was a glitch in his new aids (and wouldn’t that just be the kick in the ass R&D needed to let him use his own gear occasionally) because they were obviously malfunctioning. James was saying something but his voice was cracking like there was some interference. “Say that again, buddy. These things don’t pick up sound like my other ones.”

James cleared his throat and tossed Clint his knife. “I said: Those things don’t look regulation. They make you look like a prostitute.”

Clint knew James was teasing, but his shoulders tensed when the teasing was just a hair too close to the truth. But he tried to brush it off and joke back, but he knew it fell flat. Not even a joke about how great his ass looked in purple leather didn’t seem to lighten the suddenly tense mood.

“What are they making you do?” James growled, his eyes shifting to crimson and his posture growing tense as if preparing for a fight.

“Relax, Jamie, it’s just part of my job.”

James’s shoulders didn’t relax. If anything he seemed to grow to fill more of the room, but it was just Clint’s imagination. It was a pity that James wasn’t interested because he looked downright sexy when he was angry on Clint’s behalf.

“ _What are they making you do?_ ” James repeated with a hard glint in his still fiery-red eyes.

Clint heaved a sigh and sat down next to James so he could rest heavily against his friend. “It’s not as bad as it sounds, I promise. I just have to act vapid and vulnerable so that our mark tried to ’abduct’ me for his human trafficking ring.” Clint hoped his blasé attitude towards his current op would soothe his friend; his friend that had the ability to crush people with a wave of his hand (which, admittedly could come in handy for certain missions).

“So what? They’re making you whore yourself out to stop someone, which should be the job of the police force?”  
Clint stood up suddenly and stalked over to the bathroom. “I’m going to make myself look more like a hooker. Feel free to show yourself out.” He didn’t bother to look back into the room before slamming the door to the en-suit bathroom. He knew, logically, that James was just angry on his behalf, and normally that gave him the warm fuzzies; but he had done worse things than his current op when he was younger. He didn’t like thinking about his time between the circus and being a mercenary - and being made to feel like he was worth less than dirt was not something he needed to get his head in the game, especially by James.

He was more than capable of taking care of himself, he didn’t need a stupid demon all worked up on his behalf. He wasn’t helpless anymore.  
\--

Bucky felt like he had lost control of the situation if the hurt rolling off Clint was anything to go by. He sighed heavily and kept himself invisible so he could keep an eye on Clint. He didn’t like the situation SHIELD was putting his human in, especially with how obviously uncomfortable Clint was.

When the blond stalked out of the bathroom he had his hair gelled up to look artfully ruffled and his already intense kaleidoscopic eyes were outlined with professional looking make-up. Even though he was too tall and broad shouldered to ever be considered ‘vulnerable’ Bucky could definitely see the appeal of a handsome blond in purple leather. Even the makeup was oddly attractive - and _that_ was a kink he never knew he had and would have to explore later.

Bucky knew Clint was an excellent spy but he had never been around on the rare occasion that Clint’s sniper talents were shelved for an undercover operation instead. He watched the stiff and still angry Clint melt away and his undercover persona take over as soon as he swayed into Action Bar.

Even insubstantial as he was, the vast amount of people dancing to something with a heavy bass line made him feel like the walls were closing in around him. He stuck to the wall and watched as Clint slid up to what was unmistakably a stripper pole. What it was doing in a fairly classy club Bucky didn’t know, but once Clint pulled himself up and wrapped his body around the gleaming metal Bucky was transfixed.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t the only one watching; and the slimy jerk at the bar was looking at Clint like he was a midnight snack.

Bucky growled low in his throat and reached forward to melt the scum bag's eyes out of his skull before he noticed Clint watching the same man, his laser-like focus only amplified by the glasses he was wearing for whatever reason (but they did make his sharp features soften and give him a more vulnerable and helpless look).

Bucky would be damned again before he admitted it, but he nearly swallowed his tongue when Clint did some spectacular bending and managed to wrap a leg around the pole and hang upside down which left his rather delicious looking torso on display when his loose fitting shirt submitted to gravity.

With more will power than he knew he still had, Bucky returned to Clint’s empty hotel room to wait for him to come back. There was no way he could watch the rest of the operation, no matter how much he wanted to keep an eye on Clint. That was more torturous than anything Hell could ever come up with in a million lifetimes.

While demons didn’t need sleep, years in Hell had taught Bucky that he could shut his mind down enough so that he could relax and meditate. It was handy in situations like he found himself in now: right back to where he was when he took Clint to Paris; but instead of the soft and fond feelings the blond could evoke, this was a blinding rage steeped in jealousy - that ass face was gonna touch _his_ human!

Bucky took a deep breath and forced the strong emotions down so he could relax and wait for Clint so he could figure out what he had done to upset him so much. Sometimes he wished he hadn’t vowed to himself never to search Clint’s head like he had when he had been summoned. It was handy upon first meetings to know what the summoner wanted, but he had never needed to created a new set of rules for head searching until he made the decision to figure out what made Clint tick. And if there was one thing demons were known for, it was keeping their word, twisted and convoluted though it may be; and he wasn’t about to stop that now. _No,_ he reasoned, _I’m gonna do this the hard way._

A muffled thump alerted Bucky that he wasn’t alone anymore, and with just a twitch of his senses, he knew Clint was alone. The human fell through the door and landed gracelessly on the floor, his beautiful blue/green/grey/hazel eyes were hazy and out of focus as if he were drugged. Bucky sniffed and felt his skin prickle in outrage. Clint’s normal scent of resin, citrus, and summer was tainted by a synthetic chemical scent in his blood.

 _What the hell is their problem?_ Bucky wondered to himself as he noticed Clint was no longer wearing the odd glasses or the leather pants, and had his own, bright purple hearing aids back. Coulson had obviously not noticed how his asset was high and let him leave on his own. If it had been Bucky in charge of the op, he would have either made the archer stay or walked him back to his door to ensure nothing happened. But, maybe that wasn’t just how Clint and Phil’s relationship worked and was something more unique to his own relationship with the blond assassin.

Bucky bristled again and jumped off the bed to help Clint off the floor where he sat blinking as if only mildly concerned about his predicament. He held out his real hand and offered it to Clint with a gruff, “Need help, bird brain?”

Clint turned his gaze to Bucky and smiled before he reached out quickly and pulled him down with little effort. Clint would have never been able to get the drop on him normally, but Bucky was distracted by the smudged eyeliner around eyes that seemed about 90 percent pupil. “Not with getting up,” Clint said lowly before he tried to tug Bucky more into his lap.

The end result was both of them falling into a tangled mass of limbs.

Bucky was sure he was hallucinating when his brain registered Clint whispering “Need you, James.” He refused to be _that guy_ and put some distance between himself and his friend before he could do something totally foul and take advantage of Clint in his drugged state. It wasn’t like Clint actually wanted or needed him; it was the drugs talking and taking away Clint’s control.

“Come on, Hotshot, you’re gonna go to bed and sleep this off,” he commanded gently while he slid an arm around Clint’s shoulders so he could maneuver him to the bed.

This night was turning into a test of Bucky’s will, he was sure of it. As soon as he had been deposited on the bed, Clint began to strip out of his clothes so he could settle down to sleep.

Normally Clint kept some clothes on so he could be ready for anything, a habit he had apparently picked up while being a merc, Clint had confessed one night over falafel; so Bucky could admit to not being ready for so much skin being uncovered close enough to touch.

He sighed heavily and touch a finger to Clint’s temple and whispered “sleep,” to his friend who immediately passed out under the suggestion.

Like so many other nights, Bucky stood sentry over Clint while he slept. This time was one of the hardest though - he could see the effects the drugs were having on his archer and he agonized over not being able to do much to help. He knew if he reached out to touch Clint again he wouldn’t be able to leave him so he kept back and tried to clear his mind of bronzed muscles on display as Clint thrashed on the bed in a fitful sleep.

When the sun began to shine through the crack in the heavy curtain he left with a vow to himself to never think about the previous night for the rest of his existence. That way led to madness. But he couldn’t stop himself from wishing, just one time, that he was the one Clint had been dreaming about.

 

 

_Puente Antiguo, New Mexico, 2011_

 

Bucky didn’t realize exactly how much time he spent with Clint until he cut back to only a few check ups a month, then cut back even further to sporadic pop-ins when he had a deal to fulfill. He pretended that it didn’t effect him or Clint, but when he realized he couldn’t automatically find the archer, he knew he had damaged their friendship.

Once he found him in a small blip of a town in New Mexico, Bucky vowed to spend as much time with Clint as possible. He would do anything to brighten up his smile and get rid of the haunted look in his eyes.

The only movement Clint made upon seeing Bucky appear in front of him was to clench his fist and shake his head. “Seeing things again, Barton,” he whispered to himself before he stalked over to the mini fridge in his hotel room.

Bucky felt his stomach muscles clench when he saw what Clint was pulling out of the fridge. From a young age Clint had vowed to never drink because of what it did to his father - he once said he would do anything in his power to keep himself from turning into his father. “I thought you didn’t drink,” Bucky said hesitantly while taking a cautious step towards his friend and the glass bottle gripped in straining fingers. It look like Clint was barely holding on.

Clint just sighed heavily in response before setting the bottle down on the cluttered table and collapsed back onto the messy twin sized bed nearest to the door. He made no motion to talk to Bucky which hurt more than he’d like to admit. Actually, the more he thought about it, the more it seemed like Clint didn’t actually believe his eyes when he appeared. Like his mind had been conjuring up copies when he expected Bucky to show and he hadn’t.

Guilt gnawed at his insides. It wasn’t a feeling he was used to anymore.

Perhaps the last time he felt guilty was when he survived the train bombing and Steve had fallen to his death. He didn’t do well when presented with guilt and grief - he tended to overreact.

It wasn’t his fault. He could be quite melodramatic at times.

“Hey Clint,” he greeted again before he sat down next to the blond and ran a hand through Clint’s disheveled hair in a soothing manner. “Sorry I haven’t been around much recently. I’ve been dealing with some personal stuff.” He couldn’t help the small cringe at such a weak excuse but it was mostly true.

Clint hummed in reply and pushed into Bucky’s hand a little as if to encourage him to keep up the petting. “I wish you were here, James. I don’t know what’s going on with me, but whatever it is, it’s getting worse. I’ve got half a mind to try summoning you, but I don’t know how to get a specific demon.” He sighed again and kept talking to the ceiling as if Bucky weren’t there but he hoped he was.

It was like someone punched him in the mouth over and over as he listened to all of Clint’s worries like he wasn’t actually present in the room. Clint seemed to honestly believe he was just hallucinating.

Clint turned on his side and curled up tight with his face mostly hidden by his knees. “I’m just so tired, James. I wish I knew what I did to push you away.” His voice, although muffled by his position, still rang loud and clear in the otherwise empty room.

Bucky was horrified to realize that his next inhale caught as though he was out of breath. More horrifying, was the tears leaking out of the corners of his eyes. He hadn’t cried since he was a boy, there was no use for tears when he had been alive, and he didn’t think his body was capable of producing tears now that he was a minion of Hell.  
He laid down next to Clint and curled around the taller man to offer what comfort he could while the archer slept.

\--

Clint jolted awake to the obnoxiously loud personalized ring tone shattered the silence. _Secret Agent Man_ had been funny years ago, but now he almost decided to let it ring or silence it and pretend he didn't notice his phone ringing. He shook the thought out of his head and hopped off his bed to answer Phil before it could go to voicemail. “Barton,” he answered, trying to sound like he hadn’t just been sleeping on the job.

He cringed at the bland tone Phil used when he filled him in on the situation and asked him to come in as backup. It wasn’t a tone that was normally directed towards him, but over the past year it had been used more and more as he seemed to sink deeper and deeper into the funk he found himself in.

He pretended he didn’t know why it was happening but that was a bunch of bull. He knew it. Coulson knew it. His SHIELD issued shrink knew it. But for the sake of his sanity and his job he wasn’t going to tell anyone that he was feeling down because his best friend, a demon with whom he had made a deal with 9 years ago, was no longer hanging out with him. He sounded nuts just thinking about it.

 _Sometimes I think I made the whole thing up and Coulson just miraculously healed on his own,_ Clint thought to himself as he slid into his boots and headed out the door without bothering to tie them. It wasn’t like he was going to trip over the laces - he wasn’t that far gone, thank you very fucking much.

He arrived at Coulson’s (and yeah, he would always be Coulson in the field no matter how close they had been) surveillance van and rapped on the door as soon as he got close enough. It was raining and not very pleasant out, and he would much rather not have to stand out in the elements if he was just here for backup. “What’s up, boss?” he asked while he settled on the ground and began lacing his boots up properly.

“I just have a feeling,” Coulson said slowly, his sharp eyes never leaving the video footage spread out over three monitors.

Clint immediately sat up straighter and turned his gaze towards the feed as well. “What kind of feeling? I mean, I’m still convinced I’ve seen this thing before.”

He had already voiced this thought to Coulson, who in true Phil fashion, had taken it into consideration but ultimately had to shelve the idea since there was no concrete evidence to back up a hunch.

Coulson held out a package of chocolate donuts to Clint who took one and knew that he had been forgiven for being so out of it recently. It was nice to have someone he could rely on who would let him deal with his own shit and offer help only if he thought it was welcomed. Clint had to appreciate that.  
He munched happily on his donut and took Coulson’s place when he went to go do a sweep of the area where the 0-8-4 had landed and the area around it which had been tarped off to create a barrier to keep locals and alien hunters out of the way of a possible dangerous object.

It wasn’t a half hour later when the radio in the van crackled to life and Coulson’s voice came over the open channel asking for “eyes up high. With a gun.” Clint’s hands automatically went to his sniper rifle before he hesitated and reached instead for his bow and quiver. It wasn’t that he didn’t like guns, he was proficient in all types of weapons, with a specialty in anything that could be made into a projectile, but if Coulson needed his eyes up high, he was getting eyes and a recurve. He had a feeling that it was just one final jab at him for being next to useless recently.

“Hello handsome,” he said quietly into the private line opened between himself and Coulson as he waited for the giant blond to get to his destination, or get the take-down order. “You better call it, Coulson. I’m starting to root for this guy,” he warned even as he kept his bow drawn and ready to fire. He wasn’t pleased to stand out in the pouring rain but he could admit to being a little curious to see if the guy could lift the 0-8-4 when no one else had been able to do it yet.

His shoulders slouched in disappointment when the Nordic L’Oreal model couldn’t do the impossible. After Coulson called him off the shot, he waved down to the control box so his perch could be reeled back to the ground.

He grumbled through drying off his bow and going back to the hotel. He was still tired even with the first good sleep he had gotten in weeks and now he was soaked to the bone.

…And apparently still seeing things.

He groaned quietly at the James-shaped hallucination sitting on his bed with his leather jacket resting on the bed next to him. He wished, not for the first time, that his imagination wasn’t so vivid that his mind could conjure up the exact curve of James’s biceps and perpetual 5 o’clock shadow. He swore to himself and started peeling off his wet gear and tossing it on his bed as he marched with purpose to the shower to help warm himself back up.

It wasn’t until he heard a squawk of indignation that he realized that, this time, he wasn’t just seeing things. “James?” he called, cursing internally at how his voiced cracked like he hadn’t since puberty. “Where the hell have you been?”

James cringed and looked guilty. “Would you accept ‘Hell’ as a response and not shoot me in the face?”

Clint rolled his eyes so hard it hurt. “I can’t shoot you. I’m unarmed.”

James barked out a laugh. “If I’ve learned one thing in the 9 years I’ve known you, it’s that you’re never unarmed even without pants.”

Clint collapsed onto the vacant bed and ran a large hand through his soaked hair which, no doubt make him look like a drown rat. “Where the fuck have you been, you ass?”

James started fiddling with the hem of his shirt and was purposely _not_ making eye contact with Clint; a fact that was upsetting him more than it should.

“Well,” he began icily, “you think about it while I shower. Maybe when I get back you’ll have thought up a good enough excuse.” He wasn’t going to let James off the hook without a proper explanation even though he was so excited to have his friend back that the reason didn’t really matter (nor was it really his business, he rationalized).

Just to keep his cool and not start cursing James’s very existence, Clint started loudly humming the highly appropriate E.T. that he had heard on the radio on his long drive into the desert. Clint wasn’t convinced that they weren’t dealing with something alien…not unlike that demon (hopefully) in his hotel room.

He took his aids off and kept humming the annoyingly catchy song regardless of how he sounded when he could barely hear himself. No matter how angry he was with James, and he was downright furious at being left alone for the better part of a year, he couldn’t stand to stay in the shower longer than it was necessary to wash the heat of New Mexico in May off his skin.

He toweled off quickly and put on a pair of basketball shorts in a shade of purple that was almost offensive to the eye. He knew, were it a year ago, James would have given him crap for the sheer volume of purple in his non-SHIELD related wardrobe. Now, he wasn’t so sure. He wished he knew what he did to make James leave him.

 _Maybe_ , he thought to himself as he rubbed the majority of the water out of his hair, _it was the fight we had in Budapest?_ He shrugged to himself and gingerly opened the bathroom door, worried that James wasn’t going to be there when he opened it, just like countless other times.

Clint wasn’t going to admit to the swell of relief that crashed over him when he immediately spotted James stretched out on the unmade bed Clint had vacated several hours before after dreaming of James curled up around him and petting him until he fell asleep. “You shit, you were here earlier!” he exclaimed indignantly. “I made a complete dick of myself and you just _let me_?!”

James cringed, looking guilty, and reached a hand out to Clint and then snatched it away as if he had been burned, as if he believed he had lost the right to touch him. While Clint was angry and hurt, he wasn’t enough of an asshole to allow that look to stay on James’s face any longer. So, instead of letting the demon stew like he had planned, he hip checked him into the middle of the bed and sat as close as he dared to the brunet.

“You don’t actually need to explain yourself,” Clint said after James had tried several times to start talking only to close his mouth and shake his head. “I mean, I’m still mad that you abandoned me, like hella mad, but I missed you so fucking much I don’t want to be mad while you’re here.”

James tried once more to start talking before Clint reached forward and placed one long finger against James’s lips to silence him. The demon nodded and rested his head against Clint’s arm.

They sat together in silence until Clint’s stomach rumbled in protest to being empty. He hadn’t eaten anything today other than the donut Phil had given him out of the packet. “If you’ll get me Chinese I may be persuaded to forgive you faster,” Clint hinted with a quick jab to James’s side. When James stood to disappear away from Clint, who always used to pick at him good-naturedly for the sulfur smell when he appeared or disappeared, he reached out for the demon one more time. “Just promise you’ll come back.”

He must have looked pathetic enough for James because he smiled and nodded. “Of course. You’re not gonna be able to get rid of me so easily again,” he joked before he blinked out of existence. James had attempted to explain the World traveling with the In-Between, the place between the living world and the other worlds beyond that no one got to see while alive, but it was all very confusing and made little sense in the way of actual physics (unless one counted string theory, which was way above Clint‘s pay grade). Clint counted himself lucky that he had gotten a taste of the In-Between before he died so he knew what to expect when the Hounds eventually came for him in a little over a year’s time.

In no time, James returned with a large plastic bag full of all of Clint’s favorites as well as a few cartons for James. Clint once asked about eating since it didn’t seem necessary for someone who was dead to need food to generate energy. James had just shrugged him off and told him that the food was the best part of this century since he had never had access to such a variety of foods when he had been alive. Clint sometimes felt bad for James, from what little he knew about the demon’s human life, it hadn’t been a good time to be an able bodied young man - then again, that was almost every era; the world hadn’t changed much.

They settled down on the bed again and Clint flipped on the television to flip through the movie channels. If SHIELD was going to put him up in a shoddy hotel then they could at least pay for his pay-per-view. “Sorry Jamie, we’re gonna have to watch _The King’s Speech_. I have a mighty need to watch Colin Firth in all his gloriousness.”

James, who was too busy slurping Lo Mein just shrugged and rolled his eyes so hard it looked like it would hurt. “How many times do I have to tell you to never call me ‘Jamie’?” he grumbled once he had swallowed the enormous bite of noodles. Clint just smiled like a jerk and bumped his shoulder into James’s, almost knocking the noodles out of grip.

They watched most of the movie in a comfortable silence broken only by James’s terrible manners until he nudged Clint with his demon arm. When Clint drew his gaze away from the movie, James was smiling. “What’s with the purple, bird brain? You got something against every other color?”

Clint scowled for a moment before he felt his lips twitch up into a smile. “Fuck off and watch this. It the best part. He just swears for two minutes straight.” And just like that, Clint knew they were going to be okay eventually. It would take time and work for things to go back to normal, but they were on the right track. He may never know why James disappeared out of his life for nearly a year, but he knew they could move past it and build a new and different relationship.

 

 

_New York City, New York, 2012_

 

Bucky sighed happily around a large bite of New York-style pizza. If there was one thing he learned since he started haunting Topside thanks to Clint, it was that food had greatly improved since he had been alive. He remembered boiling everything to ensure you weren’t going to die of salmonella or whatever pathogen had found its way into the food. Now things were baked, broiled, grilled, or his favorite method of cooking: deep fried. In fact, his next stop was going to be to track down some deep fried Oreos or cheesecake.

He was enjoying himself as much as he could while not being allowed to spend time with his favorite human. Thanks to a secure location somewhere in New Mexico, Clint wasn’t able to communicate with anyone outside the complex and an extra heat signature reading would raise a lot of red flags if the security was as tight as Clint said it would be.

However, that didn’t mean he wasn’t keeping tabs on the human train-wreck that was Clinton Francis Barton. In fact, Clint was currently showing off his brilliance about some inter-dimensional, glowing blue cube. He allowed himself a moment of smug pride for his brilliant human (because he wasn’t going to lie to himself anymore, Clint was officially his human even if Natalia was technically the one to hold Clint’s contract) before he allowed his focus to slip back to his delicious, greasy pizza.

He will deny to the end of time that he jumped even a fraction when Natalia appeared on the opposite side of his table as if she had been summoned. “I thought I told you to stay Below unless you’ve been summoned,” she scolded mildly. “I worry about you, Soldier. You’ve become too attached to that boy, and you know nothing can come of it. The odds that he’ll remember you once he goes Below-”

“I know. I know,” he cut her off, unwilling to hear her verbalize his number one fear. “But he’s fun to mess with. And this time is so much better than what Topside was like when I was actually alive.” He gestured to his pizza to emphasize his point.

Natalia hummed to hide her minor annoyance, and primly crossed her ankles. “Regardless, you have a job to do for me. The Yauch contract is up. I need you to collect.” She produced a scroll out of nothing and slid it across the table; the name _Yauch, Adam_ was written in Natalia’s flawless script.

Bucky sighed heavily and shoved what was left of his slice of pizza into his mouth and smiled around the mouthful when Natalia made a disgusted face.

He quickly mourned his lack of fried dessert before he snatched up contract and jumped down Below to retrieve his favorite Hellhound.  
He released a piercing whistle and Havoc came bounding towards him at break-neck speed. While slightly smaller than average, Havoc was the first Hound Bucky had picked out as a pup and trained to be the best damn Hound in Hell. Regardless of his small stature, Havoc had a lot of spunk and had a flawless retrieval record; in fact, he reminded Bucky a lot of Steve before he had been dosed with Vita-Rays and become the beefcake symbol of Freedom and Patriotism.

Once Havoc had skidded to a stop at Bucky’s feet he rested his hand on the scruff of the Hound’s neck and transported them both Topside to the middle of Manhattan. They were invisible to mortal eyes but he could see them shiver as the duo walked by.

Many demons considered humans to be completely oblivious to everything around them, but Bucky knew that was untrue. He could see the way they would give them a wide berth even though they were insubstantial and could pass through any object with ease. It was an instinct to stay away from any danger - the fight or flight instinct - that kept any interaction between he and Havoc and the rest of the people in the busy metropolitan area.

Bucky stopped and fished the contract out of his pocket to give to the Hound. Havoc sniffed at the rolled up parchment and huffed at it before he tilted his head into the air and howled. He danced in place, having caught the scent of his prey but remained in place, well trained enough to not leave his master’s side until commanded.

“Please don’t make a mess this time. I’m not in the mood to fix any damage you cause.”

Havoc wined and nosed at Bucky’s phantom hand before trotting in place again, obviously eager to do his job. Bucky smiled indulgently at the over-excited Hound and releasing him with a “Geh Weiter” command. Havoc took off like a rocket (Bucky refused to use the ‘bat out of Hell’ simile since Havoc was definitely _not_ a bat and he wasn’t fond of idioms so close to the truth) towards the target while Bucky strolled along at a much more subdued pace.

He was grateful that he wasn’t spending his afterlife in eternal torment and fire, but that didn’t mean he had to enjoy every moment of being a Crossroads Demon. But he tried to have fun where he could; and now he planned on enjoying himself before he could safely meet up with Clint again so he could decompress with authentic Thai food and a good microbrew after such a long surveillance mission. But until then, he would do what he did best.

He rapped his knuckled against the front door to the rhythm of the song in his head until it opened. Havoc, who had been impatiently pacing at the door slid in as soon as it opened a fraction to show the terrified face of his deal.

“It’s not a good time,” Adam said before his frantic eyes stopped on Bucky’s face. “I know you.”

Bucky smiled and started singing under his breath so that Adam could hear and appreciate the irony. “I’m waiting on a call from a friend so it’s not a good time for me either. So, in the spirit of time management we’ll get this nasty business over and done with and we can both go about with our lives. Or, actually, neither of us will because we’ll both be dead. But I have a lovely un-life to get back to so it’s just you that this effects at all.”

While Bucky was talking Havoc started inching closer to Yauch. When he stopped talking and Havoc started quietly growling, he knew that Yauch could hear it too if the rapid color loss was any indication. “Now I hope the fame was worth it, Adam, my boy. Because it’s curtains for you. No encore. Lights out.” He stopped for dramatic effect and turned to face his Hound before clearly and slowly pronouncing the attack command.

“Havoc, Fass!”

Even though he had been doing this for decades, he honestly didn’t enjoy this part of his job. He didn’t have the stomach for the violence, but he dealt with it because the alternative was so much worse.

Once the deed was done he sent the soul off to Natalia’s office with a swift kick up the ass - or what would have been the ass were souls equipped with such nonsense.

“Good boy,” he praised, switching back into his first language. His superiors didn’t understand why he trained his Hounds to respond to German commands after dying in Germany during the war; but for him it was a reminder that his new existence was for a good purpose.

And speaking of good purposes, it was time to check in with (ie. spy on) Clint and see how bored he was. He always knew where all his deals were regardless of distance so it wasn’t like Clint could ever technically be off-grid to him. But sometimes, giving someone the illusion of privacy was enough.

He closed his eyes and reached his consciousness towards Clint only to find nothing. The complex that he was stationed at was a giant hole in the Middle of Nowhere, New Mexico. He felt cold dread rush down his spine before he forced his being to Hell to search through the newly acquired damned souls. He was a little confused since he had always been able to feel when one of his contracts had been fulfilled. _Maybe because I wasn’t there. Or I was concentrating on a job_ , he reasoned with himself. But reason wasn’t enough when he went up and down the line of souls and couldn’t pinpoint the unique brightness and glow that he had been so in tune with ever since they met almost 10 years ago. _If he went and got himself killed just a few months before his contract is up I’m going to bring him back just so I can kill him myself. I wanted to be there for him!_

That thought stopped him short. There was literally nothing he hated more than having to witness the fulfillment of each deal, and yet he couldn’t bear the thought of having missed Clint’s final moments.

He shook the thought out of his head and continued to search. Since he had obviously missed Clint’s no doubt grand entrance, he decided it was time he snuck into the Hall of Records to double check that Clint’s contract had been completed.

Luckily he noticed the lack of Clint right away or he may have ended up searching through weeks or months of contracts. He wished Upper Management would listen to him when he suggested going digital. But no, they were stuck in the dark ages, digging through countless scrolls of names and dates and conditions. It was so irritating to know that those winged mooks in the penthouse suite got to use computers when Hell had most of the technology moguls. Some of them he wished would go Upstairs just so he didn’t have to hear them bitch and moan forever, but no. He had to do this the old fashioned, seriously irritating way. And maybe that was why his request had been ignored. Not because demons were scared of change, but because they loved to torture you no matter what your position was; and as a grunt he was an easy target for eternal annoyance.

He ran his hands through his hair in frustration. He wasn’t finding anything which meant he was still Topside and somehow (impossibly) Clint had slipped through the cracks. This wouldn’t do. He was going to have to break a few rules to find him, but Clint was worth it. And he was definitely going to ignore that because that direction let to madness and other goopy feelings he didn’t want to have to deal with. Even for Clint.

Maybe for Clint.

He counted himself lucky that he had personally handled the soul of one Phillip J. Coulson. It made locating the son of a bitch so much easier than sifting through over 7 billion souls that were currently Topside. He expanded his consciousness as far as he could before he found him on a flying aircraft carrier ( _and isn’t that just the shit?_ he thought to himself with a kind of giddy fascination). The man in question was sitting behind a desk with his head in his hands and a display projected into the air with Clint’s SHIELD data.

Bucky materialized at Coulson’s left elbow and manhandled him out of his chair and against the wall before the man had time to aim another gun between his eyes - he still hadn’t forgotten or forgiven him for Madrid yet. “Where’s Barton?” he snarled in Coulson’s face. He hope he was keeping his anger in check enough that his eyes didn’t bleed to red just yet. There was little to no reason for Coulson to help him if he saw that kind of nonsense right away.

Instead, Coulson barely seemed to register anything odd at all. “Barton’s been compromised,” he said as if he had repeated that phrase over and over until the words had been burnt across his mind.

“What the fuck does that mean?” Bucky demanded and pushed Coulson into the wall with just a little more force. “Why haven’t I been able to sense him?”

Coulson blinked and looked at Bucky properly. “I remember you from somewhere. And why do you care about Barton’s condition so much?” Coulson cocked his head as much as possible given his situation and wrapped both his hands around Bucky’s wrist to try and break his hold.

It wasn’t going to work, but Bucky figured an unconscious man couldn’t answer questions as readily as one who was in possession of his entire mental faculties. “Are you his guardian angel or something?”

Bucky barked out a laugh. “Not even close, bub. But he’s most definitely _yours_.”

Coulson looked confused until Bucky decided to take pity on the man who looked like he’d been having a rough few days and let the grey of his irises bleed away so that his entire eye shined crimson. To his credit, the man in front of him only blinked and straightened out the sleeves of his suit. “That explains quite a bit then. Which means he wasn’t lying back in Prague.”

Bucky wanted to feel smug about the horror draining what was left of the color out of Coulson’s face but he couldn’t bring himself to muster up the negativity for such a malicious feeling. His heart wasn’t in it. In fact, he was trying to stop his heart from breaking at the thought that Clint was somehow beyond his help. “Where is he? Why can’t I sense him?” He wanted to curse himself when he heard the slight waver in his voice but right now anything that Coulson had to say was more important than his feelings.

“Loki. I don’t know exactly what happened, but he took Clint and I don’t know what to do to get him back,” Coulson answered with a growl, his fist hitting his desk with enough force to bruise the knuckles but he didn’t seem to notice.

“Loki?” Bucky found himself asking. “So Clint wasn’t just blowing smoke out of his ass when he said he almost shot a god?”

“Loki. Brother of Thor. He put some kind of spear to Clint’s chest and told him he had heart and all of a sudden he went all -” Coulson paused as if he had ran out of steam and sat heavily. “Look, I don’t care what you are but if you can help Clint, do it or so help me I will spend the rest of my days making your existence miserable.”

Bucky wanted to point out that the guy was in no position to be doing any threatening, but he could feel the desperation coming off of Coulson like a miasma. He felt the same, honestly.

Bucky nodded in agreement and felt the floor beneath his feet tremble and the gentle humming that was the engine of the flying monstrosity they were standing on ground to a halt. Coulson jumped to his feet and raised a hand to his ear so he could listen better to whoever was passing news along to him.

“We’ve been hit. They don’t know what it was but there’s only one person I can think of with aim good enough to crash into the only vulnerable spot on the turbines. If he manages to hit another, we’re going down.” Bucky couldn’t tell if Couslon was talking to him or not, but it didn’t matter. The only thing he took out of that was that Clint was in the area.

He followed Coulson out into the corridor but turned to go another direction when he saw that Coulson was headed for what could pass for an empty detention center where a guy with a serious love affair with the color green was standing as if he was waiting for someone or something. _That must be Loki. Coulson can handle that ass._ He was worried about Coulson going against someone with such obvious power, but he didn’t have time to worry about that. Right now, his top priority was finding Clint. Which, currently, was like finding a needle in a haystack.

He closed his eyes and felt around with all of his senses until he felt a faint tug behind his ribs. It was so minor he wouldn’t have normally noticed it at all. He used the In-Between to travel to the source of the small tug and felt as if an invisible hand squeezed his heart. Clint was sneaking along a metal catwalk through the maze of the upper level of the ship. His normally kaleidoscopic eyes were solid blue and so bloodshot it looked like he had gone days without sleep. Which, considering the difference in time between Hell and Earth, it was quite possibly days since he last felt Clint.

He stepped in front of his human and reached out to stop him before he had to dodge away from Clint’s bow. He had never had the weapon trained on him before so he never really understood how disorienting it was to see such a primitive weapon held in the very capable hands of one of the world’s most deadly assassins. The recurve bow really was a work of art, but Bucky reasoned that he could appreciate it much more if it wasn’t aimed at his person. It wasn’t that Clint could hurt him, but he didn’t fancy having to dig an arrow out of his chest any time soon. It would be difficult to explain to Upper Management why he needed fixed up when he wasn’t even allowed to be Topside at the moment.

“Relax, Clint. It’s just me. It’s just James,” he said as mildly as possible while preparing to disarm Clint as gently as possible. Which didn’t go according to plan. Apparently even as a mindless drone Clint was more than capable to take out a stronger opponent. All of a sudden Bucky found himself ducking around a knife before he managed to tackle Clint to the floor and bash his head into the railing of the catwalk, officially giving him a concussion if the confused look was anything to go by. But he’d do it again and again if it meant watching the unnatural electric blue fade back to their usual multi-colored hue.

“James?” Clint slurred before his eyes slid shut as he lost consciousness.  
Bucky worried about how hard he had hit Clint but decided to just get him to medical as quietly as possible. Which, given the commotion going on around them, was going to be difficult in their current dimension. Instead, he dodged a large green beast as it lunged by charging after a blonde Renaissance Faire reject, and ducked into the In-Between to get Clint to the relative safety of the med bay without being bombarded by the chaos the Trickster god unleashed on SHIELD.

He watched from the safety of the In-Between as Clint was discovered by one of SHIELD’s doctors and brought to a room where he was promptly handcuffed to an exam table. Bucky felt awful at the sick look that kept crossing over Clint’s face as the blue came and went from his eyes. He had the odd urge to hit him over the head again, but instead made the executive decision to wipe the remainder of the god’s influence from Clint’s mind.

With his mind his own again, Bucky watched in awe as Clint slid his hands out of the cuffs and rushed to the en suite bathroom. He couldn’t help but flinch as he heard Clint retching into the toilet. There was nothing for his body to reject but stomach acid, which Bucky remembered from experience was an awful feeling. He wanted to appear next to Clint to offer what comfort he could, but he also knew he had to stay out of sight or else risk expulsion straight back to Hell. He whined pathetically at his inability to help in any other way, and only felt minutely better when Clint was able to stand up and rinse his mouth out. He looked more human after he washed his face and Bucky felt a surge of pride at Clint’s innate ability to bounce back regardless of the situation.

Bucky followed Clint like a pathetic shadow as he snuck out of medical and almost collided with a mass of blond beefcake. A very familiar blond beefcake. “What the actual fuck?” Bucky asked and didn’t realize until there were two blonds looking at him that he had lost control and accidentally shifted into reality.

Steve stopped his assessment of Clint and immediately put himself between Clint and Bucky with his back to Clint as though Bucky was a threat. And wasn’t that such a _Steve thing_ to do? Bucky would be proud if he weren’t also terribly confused. “Bucky?” Steve asked cautiously as if he couldn’t believe his eyes.

Bucky was right there with him, since Steve had died sixty-seven years ago and there was no way in Hell that Bucky would ever be allowed Upstairs.

These facts weren’t adding up to Bucky and in his confusion he turned to Clint and asked, “You can see him too, right?” and pointed towards Steve who was dressed in a star-spangled onesie that Bucky _really_ wanted to make fun of. But first, he had to make sure he hadn’t finally cracked and lost what was left of his mind.

When Clint nodded and raised an eyebrow while mouthing ‘Bucky’ in his general direction. “Of course. Fury finally decided to let Cap out of containment.” Clint turned slightly towards Steve to address some question he had missed in his shock. “And yeah, if you need a pilot, I’m your guy. Quinjets are pretty easy to figure out once you know what you’re looking for. We can meet up with Stark at his Tower in no time.”

Clint gave Steve a sharp salute and waited until Steve had turned the corner before he rounded on Bucky. “How in the _Hell_ do you know Captain-fucking-America?” Clint asked. His confusion was evident if the slightly manic look in his eye was anything to go by (if not, then the waving hands clinched it).

Bucky heaved a sigh and followed Clint as he started to stalk away to the hanger. “I grew up with Stevie. We enlisted together. My full name is James Buchannan Barnes; more commonly known as Bucky. I sold my soul to bring him back because the symbol of America and Freedom was more important than a grunt like myself.” He hadn’t said much, but he still felt wrung out as he finished and almost ran into Clint’s back when the blond stopped and turned so they were facing each other once again. “What? Sound familiar?”

Clint reached out and clung to Bucky’s shoulder as if he wanted to bring him in for a hug. Instead, he shook his head and smiled slightly. “We’ll talk later,” he promised while still smiling. “Now, do you want to fight next to your friend again?”

Bucky let out a laugh and pushed Clint out of the way so he could board the Quinjet before Clint could. “Come on loser!” he called, loosing him in the excitement of a pre-battle adrenalin rush.

It was amazing how natural it felt standing next to Steve again; how well they were able to synch up with each other even after years and years apart. He was almost dizzy from the high of it all. So excited that he didn’t notice for a long while that he hadn’t heard Clint over the comm unit that had been hastily shoved in his hand by a very confused-looking man in bright red and yellow armor. “Hey bird brain, what’s it looking like up top?” Bucky asked, unable to keep the worry out of his voice.

The response took a minute to come through the hiss and crackle from the other end. “I’m in time out,” came the pained reply.

Bucky growled and raised his demon-given hand, and with it, the surrounding Chiturai collapsed when their helmets crushed their heads. He fought the urge to check on his charge, he was worried about Clint, but was more reluctant to leave Steve to his own devices.

Steve, as if he could sense Bucky’s hesitation, turned to his oldest friend. “Go, Buck. I can stay out of trouble for a while.”

“Liar,” Bucky taunted but listened and disappeared without a second thought.  
Clint was struggling to get up amidst a sea of broken glass. “A little help?” he asked and held up a hand in Bucky’s direction.

Bucky stomped over to Clint and couldn’t help but tisk at the state of Clint’s arms. He was covered in small cuts and glass. “You’re worse than a child. It’s like I can’t leave you out of my sight for even a minute.”

Clint didn’t rise to the baiting so Bucky knew he was in a lot of pain. “It won’t matter soon enough,” Clint said hollowly. It was the first time Bucky was able to detect any type of bitterness when he talked about fulfilling his end of the bargain. But with the sand running out of the proverbial hourglass, Bucky figured it was within Clint’s right to be angry. Especially without the other party knowing what lengths you went for them. And Bucky wasn’t demon enough to change that; he was going to be as far away as possible for _that_ inevitable conversation.

And speaking of Coulson, Bucky stretched out his consciousness to check on the secret badass only to realize that the man Clint had sold his soul for hadn’t survived his encounter with the god. _And no one told Clint,_ he realized with growing horror.

He must not have been able to hide his reaction since Clint immediately picked up on his distress (there was no other reason. It wasn’t from the years they had spent getting to know each other. Nope. Not at all). “What, James?”

Bucky shook his head and banished the glass shards that had imbedded themselves in Clint’s pliant flesh. Clint was all too breakable, and Bucky was well aware of it. He wasn’t going to be the one to break Clint in the middle of an inter-galactic war when he needed his wits about him or they’d all die.

“Is anyone able to get to the roof of Stark Tower?”

Bucky couldn’t hide his sigh of relief over the distraction. He didn’t want to burst Clint’s bubble and he was starting to feel _itchy_ with emotions. It was all very unbecoming of a demon. Instead he replied “I can,” over the comm. “Let me just deposit Robin Hood on the ground where he won’t try to break any more buildings and I’ll be up.”

He listened as best he could to the scientific mumbo jumbo coming out of Starks mouth about a fail-safe some scientist had built into whatever it was that opened the portal to some far corner of space. He knew the general gist of the plan, which Bucky reasoned, wasn’t a bad plan. It was simple enough at least. But he was still unwilling to leave Clint alone, even with Steve there to watch his back.

Bucky gestured for Clint to follow him and he removed the small Bluetooth unit and was pleased to see Clint follow his lead and remove his own. This was not a conversation he wanted strangers (and Steve) to overhear.

“Look,” he began, unable to look Clint in the eye. “I don’t _do_ feelings. In fact, I think I’m pretty much allergic to them. Like super allergic. I break out in hives and it’s pretty gross. I’m too pretty to be gross.”

“You’re rambling, James. That’s my gig,” Clint said. Bucky recognized the joke as the out it was, but chose to ignore it.

“You’re right, sorry. Anyways, rambling aside: I’ve never been good at the whole feelings shtick. But,” he stopped and had viciously bite the inside of his cheek to stop himself from chickening out. “I may have very recently realized that you - I mean, I.” He groaned in frustration and ran his fingers through his long hair. “I used to be really smooth when I was alive. Hell, I’m still smooth as fuck. Just - just not around you. Did you know I’m not allowed Topside when I’m not making or fulfilling a deal? Do you know how many time I sneak away to just _be_ with you?

“I was there when you lost your hearing because of AIM. I kept you awake when you were hypothermic. Remember? I had no idea what to do so I just sat there explaining the fucking Northern Lights? Who does shit like that? All I would’ve needed to do was just make you warm again. I took you sightseeing through Paris for your birthday. Who does that? And fucking _Budapest!_ I promised myself I’d never bring it up again, but I can’t tell you how much I wished it had been me that you were dreaming of. Or-”  
Bucky was armed with a list of little things he and Clint had done together since they had met almost 10 years ago, but Clint stopped him with a finger.

“Can I speak now?” Clint asked. He was smiling so Bucky took that as a good sign. He wasn’t going to be shot, at least. Clint took a deep breath and, like Bucky, looked anywhere but Bucky’s face. “It was you,” he confessed.

And if that wasn’t simultaneously the best and worst news, Bucky didn’t know what was. “There’s just one little problem: the odds that you’ll remember me after you die are slim to none.”

Clint looked stricken; like Bucky had literally ripped the rug out from under his feet. “But you remember,” he argued. “You’ll just have to _make_ me remember. You’re my best friend, Jamie. Shut, up. I’ll call you that if I want.” Bucky felt his teeth click together when he forced his jaw shut from the automatic response to such a horrible nickname. “I may have sold my soul for Coulson because he saved my life, but you’ve done that more times than I can count; and I’m sure I don’t even know half of them. You’re funny. You pretend to be all gruff and a proper demon, but you’re just a giant marshmallow. You let me be me; shit, you encourage it which is more than I can say for pretty much everyone else ever.”

Were Bucky still alive, he knew he’d be blushing like a schoolboy. As that was not the case, he ducked his head in case any sticky feelings were showing on his face. “Anyway,” he said loudly, cutting off Clint’s embarrassing rant. “I’ll do what I can to protect you, but the only way to guarantee we’ll have a shot at this is if your contract gets voided. But in the meantime, we’ll use the time we have left and hope for the best. I just couldn’t let you go out there again without telling you how much you mean to me.”

Despite the fact that Bucky was in possession of demonic strength and skills, Clint’s superior height gave him the advantage so that he was able to pin Bucky to the brick wall at his back (a blatant lie. He was going to have to explore that particular turn on and quick). “Be careful, James,” Clint commanded before he curled his hands around Bucky’s thighs and hiked his legs up so that Bucky was forced to wrap his legs around Clint’s waist or end up falling in an ungraceful heap on the ground; and Clint was definitely enough of an asshole to let that happen too. “I’m rather attached to you and I’d rather you not get blown up or something so they’d keep you Down Below until my contract was up. I’m rather looking forward to christening every flat surface I can find.”

Bucky grinned and placed a quick but filthy kiss on Clint’s lips before he hopped down. “I’ll hold you to that, Hotshot. Now, lets go save the world.”

“We’ll be big damn heroes!” Clint said with a laugh.

They both put their comm units back in and separated with one more quick kiss; as if they were reluctant to stop, as if they were adolescents in love for the first time (and weren’t they, in a way?).  
\--

Despite his time on Earth being shorter than ever; and maybe coming to an end sooner than anticipated, Clint felt high with excitement. He always felt the best when he was able to do what he did best, but this feeling wasn’t from misplaced adrenalin or anything else SHIELD’s psychology staff tried to shove down his throat. No, this was a genuine surge of happiness that he had never felt before.

He would be the first to admit that his life had never allowed for a lot of happy memories or pleasant situations. An abusive father, brother, and mentor had kept his childhood bleak. The constant nasty jobs as a mercenary had caused more trouble than the large payouts had been worth; and even SHIELD didn’t do much to ease the nightmares his job granted him. It didn’t seem to matter what side he was playing for, his particular skill set usually left him with the dirty jobs. But that was pushed to the back corner of his mind for the moment as he took a second to unstring his bow so that he could use it as a staff instead. It wasn’t like a bow would be of much use at such a close range, especially with a disturbing lack of arrows. If he could manage to disarm one of the flying space monkeys he’d be in much better shape, but until then, he wasn’t going to risk going into the fray without a weapon his was familiar with. He may not be the smartest carnie in the circus but he also didn’t have a death wish.

Clint felt his heart drop when Deputy Director Hill disrupted their comm units to speak to them. “The WSC just gave the order to nuke the city. You have 8 minutes,” she said. She had always been no nonsense but Clint could hear the underlying emotion in her voice. She was scared.

He couldn’t find it in himself to blame her. He had no idea how he could live with himself with the deaths of 8 million people on his conscious. It was a (admittedly dark) silver lining to dying along with them. Hill backed out of their private channel and silence descended amongst the group. He couldn’t hear any outside chatter over the rushing in his ears. His heart was going double time as if to make up for the fact that it wasn’t going to keep beating for the 5 months he had left on his contract.

Regardless of his panic, Clint brought his focus back to the battle at hand. “I guess dying fighting next to Captain America is a good way to go. Better than the alternative,” he joked with a grimace.

Not even Iron Man catching the warhead and aiming it at the portal could make him let go of the panic wrapping around his heart. Instead, he stole one of the Space Monkey’s spears (he refused, on principle, to call them by their proper name) and started jabbing them as they flew by. It was a nice reprieve from James’s running commentary as he held Loki’s spear inches away from the center of the device that Dr. Selvig had built for the Tesseract. Normally he tried to pay attention to what James said, but it was almost torture to hear his voice with the fear that he wouldn’t get to see him one last time if Stark’s hair-brained scheme didn’t work.

Luckily for everyone, Iron Man fell out of the portal sans nuclear missile. Clint forced himself not to collapse as all the Space Monkey’s dropped dead around them. _Huh. Hive mind, I guess_ , Clint thought to himself with a note to include that in his After-Action Report; if he was still employed by SHIELD after the last few days and he didn’t find himself on the Kill On Sight list again.

“James?” he called shyly. And that was a kick in the manhood. He wasn’t _shy_. That was a dirty word. He only acted that way to throw people off his scent. (Sometimes being one of the world’s deadliest assassins working for a top secret spy organization had it’s disadvantages). But here he had no one to pacify except, perhaps, himself. So what the absolute hell? He finally manages to get the guy and all of a sudden he’s lost all ability to function like a human being? Not cool.

He therefore took the win when James appeared at his side as if he wasn’t a complete train wreck. They all went over to where Hulk had deposited Stark after his fall from outer-fucking-space (seriously, what was his life anymore that people falling from space wasn’t completely out of the question?) and asked if he had ever had Shawarma (yes) before they all piled into the penthouse suite of Stark Tower. Clint couldn’t hold back the grin as Loki blinked rapidly to put all the Avengers (what a lame name. Fury was losing his touch) into focus. “I think I’ll have that drink now,” Loki said, and Clint had the odd feeling that he was missing something; but he was more focused on not shooting an arrow through the god’s eye. Thor wouldn’t appreciate it, he figured.

Sometimes Clint envied the resilience of New Yorkers. Even after aliens rained destruction all around them, the Shawarma joint Tony had spied was still willing to serve them while they swept up debris. His head was throbbing from James and his so-called ‘helpful’ head knocking. He rubbed his head with one hand while he jotted down notes on a napkin about his part of the action to turn into Coulson as soon as he was able; assuming he wouldn’t be arrested and thrown onto The Raft as soon as he returned to the Triskelion. The thought made his already pounding headache kick up a few notches, so he chose to ignore it for the time being or else he knew he risked a panic attack. He hated admitting to flashback, but he also knew that his current situation could trigger one if he wasn’t careful. So, with that in mind, he threw his feet into James’s lap and slumped down in his seat as far as he could without falling off and let the conversations going on around him lull him into a sort of trance.

He couldn’t say that he was comfortable or content, but he was relaxed until Stark stood up and, in total Stark fashion, disrupted his calm.  
Stark looked like he was in shock, which he probably was given what he had just done, but he stood with his soda in one hand as if he was going to propose a toast. And wouldn’t you know it, he started to speak. Clint wondered, for only a moment, if he was psychic before he had to shake his head at his own stupidity. Of course he wasn’t, cold reading was a parlor trick he had learned at the knee of a master. He must’ve hit his head harder than he thought, he reasoned with a gentle shake of his head before he focused his attention to whatever Stark was talking about.

“…and while I’m not a fan of SHIELD or their methods. No offence, Barton-” Clint waved him off, he wasn’t wrong after all- “I will admit that they weren’t all bad. And, maybe one of the best was Agent Coulson.”

Clint sat up straighter, ignoring his protesting muscles. _Was?_ Clint thought. He had to force down the hysteria threatening to bubble up. Next to him James (he couldn’t call him Bucky. No, to Clint, he would always be James) sat up too and turned to face Clint with a pained look on his handsome face.

“I won’t pretend to know much about him, but he was patient, brave, and a genuine badass. He took on a god with nothing more than his wits and a gun.”  
Clint felt his heart constrict in his chest as if iron bands had wound their way around it to crush it to dust before the Hounds could get him. His pulse was pounding in his ears and he wasn’t getting enough air. He didn’t need to hear the rest of Starks speech to piece together what had happened.  
Coulson, the absolute jerk, went up against the god who had taken away Clint’s will and stood up against someone with more power because he, like his hero, hated bullies. And if Stark was using the past tense, Coulson hadn’t survived the encounter.

Clint bit the inside of his cheek so hard he felt his teeth tear through the soft flesh. He stood quickly onto shaking legs, and fled the restaurant.

He felt more than saw James follow him. As soon as Clint decided he was far enough away from the restaurant he stopped and collapsed to his knees in the rubble-strewn street. Instantly, he felt a mismatched pair of arms wrap around his chest and waist.

“Breathe, Clint,” James commanded quietly. It was then that Clint realized he hadn’t taken a proper breath since Stark opened his big, fat mouth.  
Clint tried to take a normal sized breath but it wasn’t happening. And then he realized he was in the middle of a panic attack. He shook his head and forced his body to stop shaking, but couldn’t force his lungs to work.

Thankfully James had enough knowledge of Clint and his SHIELD mandated therapy sessions to know how to ease him out of the attack as soon as the demon realized what was happening. Clint could feel James’s broad chest rumble against his back as the demon whispered “in through your nose, pause, out through your mouth,” just like his therapist taught him when he finally admitted to the anxiety attacks that had been plaguing him since he was a teen.

It could have been seconds or hours later that Clint felt his ability to breathe return in slow, agonizing increments. James was still behind him, whispering encouragements along with endearments, and that was something that would take a while to get used to (not that he actually _had_ a while to get used to it). “James?” he began slowly, “can you give me a hand standing up?”

With James’s help, Clint staggered to his feet and rested his cheek against the top of James’s head and drawing all the comfort he could from the demon who was still holding on to him.  
Clint pulled himself out of James’s grasp and subtly wiped his eyes before putting his tinted sunglasses on despite the lateness of the day. He wasn’t going to use his normal excuse of ‘the sun is in my eyes!’, not when it was obvious that he was using them as armor. “Will you take me home?” he asked softly, unable to look James in the eye until he was sure he had himself completely under control.

“Of course,” the demon replied just as quietly and laced their fingers together before he forced both of them through the In-Between and out into Clint’s apartment.

He blinked heavily and tried to will away the vague nausea that always followed when he traveled with James. He let go of James’s hand to start freeing himself from his SHIELD field uniform and his arm guard before be realized he had left his bow back at the restaurant. “Shit,” he whined, completely done with everything that had happened over the last three days. “I left my bow back with Cap and Iron Man.”

James smiled and disappeared only to return seconds later with both his recurve and his empty quiver. “I looked around for a bit to see if I could salvage any of your arrows but the ones I found were pretty much useless by this point.”

Clint was always surprised at James and his ability to do so much in such a short time even though he did it often. His trips to get take-out would take a fraction of the time it normally would, and travel between miles took less than an instant. Clint would often joke that James should work for Jimmy John’s, but the demon didn’t seem to get the joke and was never around when a commercial would come on (at this point, Clint was convinced James knew and was avoiding it on purpose).

“That’s fine. I’m pretty sure I can manage without a few trick arrows for a bit.”

He placed his bow (affectionately known as Veronica) in its case and stashed everything under his bed before he tripped his way out of his boots and crawled under the mountain of blankets. “Coming?” he asked, sounding more confident than he felt. “I don’t want to be alone right now.”  
James nodded once and shed his own jacket, boots and pants before he joined Clint under the covers and maneuvered so Clint could curl up next to him and lay his head on the demon’s chest.

Exhaustion quickly pulled Clint under, but he did not sleep well. He woke up dreaming of _blue_ and _cold_ every so often. Then it was scenario after scenario of how Phil died; most of them ending with Clint pulling the trigger and shooting his friend. After waking each time, he was able to calm himself down with the knowledge that, no matter how many people he had inadvertently killed, he had enough will power to stop himself from killing Fury and Hill outright and that Phil had not died from Clint’s own hand.

It was one thing to know that, but it was another thing entirely to accept that. He had been possessed and not in full control of his actions, but he also knew that everything that had happened over the last three days was partially his own fault.

 _You have heart,_ Loki whispered in his mind.

He sat up and ran his shaking hands through his still-dirty hair. He hadn’t had the energy to shower after James brought him home; he still didn’t really have the energy, physically, but he also knew he wasn’t likely to go back to sleep after his mind started replaying ‘ _you have heart_ ’ over and over. Clint wondered if Loki said that on purpose because he knew how much that particular phrase meant to him. It was one of the first things Coulson had said to him when he had finally cornered the young mercenary and delivered his famous SHIELD recruitment speech; and it was one of the last things Phil had said before he had died back in Prague. That phrase meant a lot to Clint and now it was tainted by icy blue and miles of red in his ledger that he would never be able to scrub clean.

Clint startled when James ran a finger from his shoulder to his elbow to get his attention. Clint turned and felt something soft and squishy settle in his chest when James signed ‘ _Are you okay?_ ’ to him. It only intensified when he realized that the reason James had signed instead of spoken was that he had thought to remove his aides when Clint, himself, had forgotten.

 _Fine_ , he signed back before he ducked down to kiss James because that was something he was able to do now.

James shook his head. _Liar_ , he signed in return before he wrapped his arms around Clint and forced the blond to lay back down. It was obvious he was talking but it was apparently something Clint didn’t need to know, or maybe it was to distract him from the lack of heartbeat he should have been able to feel under his ear.

The rumbling of James’s chest lulled Clint back to sleep. He was only woken later by a persistent ringing. Apparently James had been nice enough to put in Clint’s ears when his phone had started ringing. He squinted at the display on his SHIELD issued phone (nowhere near as cool as his Galaxy, but he wouldn’t say anything like to R&D because they’re sensitive and may stop making him arrows if he insults them) and saw the ID code for Fury flashing on his screen. “Yes sir,” he answered while suppressing a yawn.

“We need you to come to DC for prisoner transport,” Fury said but Clint could hear what the SHIELD director wasn’t saying loud and clear.

He sighed and pushed James’s head away from his torso where the demon had been peppering kisses over every inch of exposed skin. “Roger that, sir. Shall I pack lightly or is this not a trip I’ll be returning from for a while?”

There was a moments pause before Fury responded. “Look, Barton. You’re not under arrest if that’s what you’re thinking. Medical wants to check you over since you escaped with Captain America before you were cleared.”

Clint hummed lowly and rolled over so that he was straddling James’s hips. “Roger that. I’ll report to the Triskelion by,” he paused and looked at the clock to note the time, “0800 tomorrow.”

He didn’t give the Director any time to reply before he hung up. He half expected a team to come bursting through his door at any moment to take him to The Raft, but until then, he wasn’t going to surrender himself over to SHIELD until he got to sleep with James at least once. “We have 12 hours before I have to be in DC,” he said with a gentle roll of his hips.

James gave him a lazy, dangerous smile. “Is that right?” he asked with a flash of crimson in his irises. “Any plans before we need to leave?”

Clint nodded and felt his chest warm with something like deep affection (he refused to use the ‘l’ word since it seemed to be jinxed) when James used the word ‘we’. Granted, for the first 8 years of their acquaintance they had spent almost all of Clint’s down time together as well as a lot of his time on SHIELD’s clock; but it was still nice that they were still at team after a year long hiatus. “I have a list of all the places where I wanna have sex with you and we can cross off at least four of them here.”

“Well then,” James growled, his voice hoarse with lust, “let’s get started.”

***

Clint didn’t even notice the scent of sulfur or the dizzying sensation when James took him through the In-Between and deposited him behind a small cluster of trees so no one could see them appear out of thin air. Clint frowned at the building before he turned his focus solely on James who had been uncharacteristically quiet since their shared shower an hour before. “Will I see you again soon?” Clint asked, hating how unsure he sounded no matter how hard he tried to conceal his worry.

James nodded absently and stood up on his tip toes to kiss Clint on the cheek before he stepped away to disappear. “I’ll get in touch with you soon,” James promised with a wave before he vanished.

He felt unease settle in his chest as he walked into the morning sun and spied the rest of the Avengers Initiative (plus Thor, but who was going to tell a god what to do?) standing around a bound and gagged Loki who seemed to be frowning heavily behind the mask covering the lower portion of his face.

“He’s much more agreeable if he can’t talk,” Clint joked weakly after Thor took Loki and the Tesseract back to Asgard. While the rest of the team went their separate ways, Clint felt Fury’s hand on his elbow. “Alright, boss, I get the gist: hands behind my head blah, blah, blah. I went through this with a through-and-through back when Coulson recruited me.”

Fury was not a man to surprise easily. Clint had tried many times since his employment with SHIELD began (mostly to see what he could get away with, but also because he was a child at heart and liked to prank people) but this was perhaps the first time he had ever seen even a modicum of shock cross Nick Fury’s face.

“What the hell, Barton? We just got you back, do you really think I’m gonna let anyone cart you off when you’re one of my top agents. As long as you get checked out by medical and let them do a few scans you can come back after you take a nice vacation.” His speech got more and more gentle as he went on about being worried about him and how “you need to look out for yourself. You’re not even 30 yet and you look ready to drop dead.”

Clint choked on a laugh and shook his head. “I’ll get checked out and take a vacation, sir. You don’t have to strain yourself.”

Fury clapped him on the shoulder and gave him a one-eyed stare. “See that you do, Agent,” he said severely before he stalked away in a flurry of leather.

Despite his hatred of medical, he wanted to leave SHIELD at the end knowing that they did all they could to get every trace of the Asgardian megalomaniac from his noggin before he was stuck with it for eternity. He sat through each test and even allowed an MRI and a CT scan with minimal fuss. He was feeling itchy by the afternoon and wished that James was beside him so he could at least have something pretty to look at if nothing else; but he knew, deep down, that something was currently bothering James and until the demon had settled whatever it was Clint would see hide nor hair of his new lover.

Once he was given the all clear from Dr. H. H. Holmes and Nurse Ratched, Clint hurried out of the clinic and into the labyrinth of lower level hallways of the Triskelion. At first the stares and whispers were easy to ignore but the longer it went on, the more he could feel his skin crawl. He pulled his hood up and, feeling like a douche-canoe, slipped his field shades on so that they couldn’t see his eyes anymore.

He could feel a panic attack settle in his chest and was never more grateful to see Steve Rogers than he was at that moment. “Cap, get me out of here,” he hissed quietly when he caught up with James’s best friend (and wasn’t that wild?).

Rogers took one look at Clint and guided him to the carport to his motorcycle. “Sorry I don’t have an extra helmet. I promise I’ll be careful,” Steve said earnestly as he swung a leg over the Harley and motioned for Clint to climb on behind him.

Clint determinedly did not think about the fact that he was basically koala-ing a national icon with a shoulder to waist ratio of a Dorito, especially an icon who was the childhood best friend of the demon he was in love with. Clint used Steve’s wide shoulder to hit his head against for using the thrice-cursed word even in the safety of his own head. “Where are we going?” he shouted over the roar of the engine before they took off.

Steve (he had to be Steve now since Clint had his arms wrapped around his waist and was clinging to his back like a limpet) turned his head slightly to answer. “Well, Tony said something about opening Stark tower to us until he manages to build something more…durable. We can always stay with him for a while. I’m sure we won’t have to deal with him too much.”

Clint felt the corner of his lip quirk up in amusement. “Whatever you say, mon capitaine.” If anything, he could help with the clean up to avoid spending too much time around anyone who knew who he was or what he had done. Perhaps not the best coping method, but at least he wasn’t curled up on his bed unresponsive to the outside world….again.

There wasn’t an opportunity to do much talking during the trip up the coast, but that was fine with Clint. They stopped for lunch outside of Boston where Steve just grumbled about the Red Sox and lamented the Dodgers abandoning Brooklyn for Los Angeles. “LA, Clint! Do you understand that level of betrayal?”

Clint wanted to answer yes. He wanted to tell Steve about his brother literally and metaphorically stabbing him in the back but didn’t want to bring down the mood (besides, that was something he had only told Phil and James). “I’m sure that was painful for you to wake up to, Cap. Has anyone told you movies are made with color now?”

Steve scowled before allowing himself to smile. “You know, I was around for _The Wizard of Oz_. That was in color,” he teased while he poked Clint’s chest. Immediately, he felt himself flash back to the moment Loki took control of his mind and took over his will. He tried not to let it show but worried he had failed when he saw a flash of guilt cross Steve’s perfectly symmetrical face.

The stop was over soon after the mood shifted to a forced cheer and they were quiet the rest of the trip until the arrived at Stark Tower where J.A.R.V.I.S. told them that Stark had two rooms set up for them and would soon be ready to be personalized to their specific tastes.

Clint felt better about himself that he wasn’t the only one weirded out by a voice coming from the walls, and followed the purple lights through a series of hallways while Steve followed a blue light in the opposite direction.  
It was obvious that Stark didn’t do anything halfway when Clint opened the door to a large room with a bed to rival the one in his own apartment in Bed-Stuy. It looked like the perfect place to hide away and decompress for a while before he started to help the emergency teams clean up the debris and corpses leftover from their battle.

\---

May was over before Clint managed to find the will to crawl out of Stark Tower and out into the streets of New York City (without having a panic attack) long enough to be of any help. June passed with a quiet party for his birthday thanks to Steve’s intervention; apparently Stark had wanted to throw a shindig worthy of a billionaire but Steve did his ‘America will be disappointed’ face and Stark had relented. He had enjoyed himself but wanted nothing more than to curl up with James, but apparently the demon was still doing whatever he was doing that didn’t involve Clint.

Not that he was upset or anything.

By the end of July Clint was sure he wasn’t going to see James until the Hounds came for his soul. He had moved back to his own apartment once Steve celebrated his 94th birthday (28th according to Steve, but Stark was a jerk and ordered 94 candles to be placed on the cake) and he could sleep through the night with minimal interruptions from nightmares.

He missed James something fierce, but managed to keep himself occupied even though he was getting twitchy the closer it got to the end of his allotted time. With only a week to go, Clint could hear growls and howling every time he closed his eyes. He had finally resulted to sleeping pills so he could close his eyes for more than an hour at a time.

“Hey James,” Clint called to the empty air of his apartment. It was times like this that he wished he could get a dog for the company, but he knew that it would be cruel to get any kind of pet if he wasn’t going to be around long enough to take care of a pet for its lifetime. “I could really use the company right now.”

When he was met with silence he growled and ran his hands through his hair before shoving them in his pants pocket. He was crawling out of his skin with nerves and anxiety. Without a pause, Clint slid into his boots without bothering to tie them and he hurried out of his apartment without a backward glance. He ignored the Tracksuit Dracula’s that were driving around the block acting menacing without actually doing anything for the time being. Maybe, before he left, he could do something about them. His fellow residents didn’t deserve to be caught in the middle of mafia crap.

He shook his head and picked up the pace. He had no particular destination in mind, but he knew he needed somewhere open so he could maybe catch his breath. He stopped at Fulton Park and shrugged as he meandered through the small park. It was quiet despite the fact that it was late afternoon and most of New York’s hipster population should be trying to find an artsy spot to drink their expensive lattes.

Taking advantage of his mild good luck, Clint parked himself under a tree and allowed himself a moment to breath. The shade provided little relief from the sweltering heat. Something was on the horizon to break the record high temperatures, Clint could feel it, but he knew he wouldn’t be around for it. This heat wave wouldn’t end until much later in the year if the hot, dry air was any indicator.

He inhaled deeply to take in as much clean(ish) air as he could but he smelled the distinct scent of sulfur. If he hadn’t spent most of the last decade in the company of someone who always walked around with a hint of the smell at all times he may have missed it. But Clint could recognize that smell anywhere. “So you’ve decided to come out of hiding at last, huh?” he groused, unable to keep the bitterness out of his voice.

The answering voice was not what he expected. Startled, Clint jumped to his feet with a knife hidden in between two fingers.

“Easy there, Agent Barton. I’m just here to chat.” She was beautiful. Beautiful in the way fire was: deadly and disastrous. Easily a foot shorter than himself, she seemed to tower over him with her presence despite her dainty frame.

“Yeah, I’m really inclined to believe you. Where’s James?” he demanded, knowing he sounded more worried than threatening (as if he were a threat to her in the first place).

She smiled. It immediately set him on edge. It was not a nice smile; while she looked pretty with her dimples and pearly white teeth showing, it was a razorblade smile that was more predatory than anything else. “Stand down, Agent. The Soldier is fine. He’s busy trying to figure out a way to get you out of your deal and is becoming increasingly frustrating with all his interruptions and general lack of ability to do his job. It’s very bothersome, you understand?”

Clint blinked rapidly. “You’re Natalia?” he asked, proud that he had kept the disbelief out of his voice. James hadn’t talked about her much, but from what he did say about her, this was not the woman he expected.

She nodded and took a few small steps towards him. Her gaze left him feeling raw and exposed, so unlike the way James looked at him. This, he knew, was a proper demon - all Hellfire and fury contained in a human body. Not that James wasn’t a proper demon, but Clint had a feeling that some of his own habits and emotions had rubbed off on James - emotions unfitting for a minion of Hell.

“You see, Clinton, I have a problem that maybe you can help me out with.” She didn’t allow him time to respond, as if she knew he had no idea what to say. “I’m in charge of maintaining deals made by my charges. For example: here’s your contract for which the collection date is next Tuesday.” She waved the rolled up parchment in front of him for only a moment before it disappeared. “My job now is much more difficult than it should be because I have a weak link in my chain of underlings.”

Clint bristled on James’s behalf, but wasn’t given the chance to tell her off before she laughed. “I can see why he likes you so much. You’re a very loyal man, Clinton.” He snapped his jaw together and nodded tightly. He didn’t like the way she laughed, like she knew some secret and was waiting for just the right moment to let him in on it. “I like loyalty, but it has no place in Hell to be honest. The number one rule to surviving Hell is to look out for Number 1. You’d make a wonderful addition to my crossroad demons: you’re handsome and you look trustworthy; people would be willing to talk to you. But, I can’t have you.” She sighed heavily and let her shoulders drop as if she were disappointed.

Clint was very confused at this point. He had yet to get a word in edge-wise and figured he wouldn’t until she felt it was necessary. She closed her eyes for a moment before another figure appeared next to her with his back to Clint. He could tell James was frustrated by the set of his shoulders and the fact that he had yet to notice Clint was only a few feet away.

“What is it, Natalia? I’m busy at the moment.”

She frowned and gave Clint a look over James’s shoulder. He could hear her voice in his head as if she were speaking aloud to him. _Do you see what I mean? He’s a weak link now thanks to you._

 _Me?_ he replied, unsure if she could even hear him. _How is this my fault?_

She shook her head and didn’t reply.  
“I know you’re busy, Soldier but I need you to listen to me very carefully.” She was speaking to James as if he were a particularly stubborn child who refused to listen. “I know what you’ve been doing between the few fulfillments I’ve managed to get you to do.” Here she produced Clint’s contract out of nowhere again. He could now see the weathered edges as if someone had handled it over and over again but had been very careful in keeping it in good condition.

James lunged for the contract and growled fiercely when she stepped out of his reach and unrolled it with a dramatic flare. She began to read bits of the contract aloud until she got to one particular phrase that she read in it’s entirety. “The demon, James Buchannan Barnes (named so upon death), does hereby witness that the deed has been fulfilled. The soul of one Clinton Francis Barton shall be traded for the resurrection of one Phillip [middle name redacted] Coulson for the allotted time of ten years Earth time beginning on the 30th of July two thousand and two and terminated on the 31st of July two thousand and twelve.”

James interrupted with another swipe at the contract. “Yes, we all know what the deal was. Why must you torture us with it?”

She tutted at him and turned back to Clint’s contract. “During such time as the deal maker, above mentioned Clinton Francis Barton survives, no harm shall come by one Phillip [middle name redacted] Coulson from any demonic interference nor by an act of god.

“Now, you may not know this, Clinton, but here in your contract, the word ‘god’ is not capitalized so it is _not_ referencing the God who presides over Earth, adversary of The Adversary, Creator of the Destructor, yadda yadda yadda. So in essence, this contract doesn’t involve any other realm in the universe where other gods may reside and sit vigilance. Am I making myself clear?”

Clint felt as if her point was just out of his reach. He played dumb for the sake of letting people underestimate him not because he was dumb, but he was stumped as to what her point was. He looked over at James for help, but the demon wasn’t even looking at him. James was staring determinedly at the ground as if willing himself to slip through the earth and go back to Hell.

“Not exactly,” he finally answered, feeling incredibly useless and stupid.

She smiled at him and this time it was much warmer than before, although there was still an undertone of ice that set his nerves alight. “What this contract states is that your Phil was to live at least as long as you did. Once you die he’s free to live out his life as long or as short as fate will allow him.”

“But he was killed by Loki,” Clint argued, feeling suddenly bereft of air like he always felt when someone mentioned Phil around him.

“My point exactly, Clinton. An act of god, lowercase ‘g’ as if to state that the god is not alone in it’s watch over worlds. This contract clearly states that Phillip Coulson was to be protected from gods until such a time when you were no longer alive. Being as that is not the case-”

“His contract is voided!” James shouted, interrupting Natalia. Clint could see the smile fighting its way onto the demon’s face through her scowl even though she maintained the sharp look.

“ _Thank you_ , James, for ruining my big reveal. But yes, Clinton, your contract has been voided due to negligence on the Celestial and Damned portion of your deal. Congratulations, your soul belongs to you again.”

She then turned to James as if she had dismissed Clint as unimportant which he found he didn’t care about one bit. However, he was worried for James who looked more like he wanted to slink off to the darkness and hide for the next millennia. “Now on to your performance, Soldier.”

James flinched and hid his face from her red-eyed gaze. Like when she announced that the deal had been broken, her face looked soft. It was obvious that she cared about James more than she would like if the slight tension in her stance was anything to go on (she obviously didn’t want to have an emotional attachment to James).

“Over the past 10 Earth years, you have been neglecting your duties Below in order to spend time with a human.” She was very gentle in her reprimand, but even her neutral tone could not hide her disappointment. “This human, to be precise. Not only that, but you’ve developed _feelings_ for him unbefitting of a demon of your position. Such behavior cannot be permitted so I’m afraid I’m going to have to let you go. Your tenure with my department is over. I can’t have you poisoning the ranks with your mushiness any longer.”

Clint felt his heart sink to somewhere near his sneakers. He had been so excited at the prospect of spending more of his time with James now that he had it, and now that wasn’t going to be happening. James was probably going to be banished to the deepest recesses of Hell and never be allowed to go Topside again until Clint was dead and gone. He reached out a hand and laced his fingers through James’s flesh hand and held on as tight as he dared.

“I’ve been trying to tell you for years, James, Hell is not for people who are so self-sacrificing and noble. Your kind just don’t make good demons. It’s even worse now that you have him. And I understand that your friend is still alive as well, the one you sold your soul to save. You may as well join them,” she said with a wave of her hand, dismissing them both as irrelevant.

She began to walk off but stopped and turned to study James again. She stepped closer to her protégé and rested her hand on his demon arm. Under her delicate fingers the smoke like substance began to grow darker and more solid looking until it started to gleam under the late afternoon sun.

“A parting gift,” she explained.

James raised his new arm up and examined it in wonder. “Wait, Natalia. What do I do?”

She shrugged. “That’s the beauty of humanity, James. You’re free to do as you wish. This is goodbye, Soldier. You won’t see me again.”

James raised his metal hand in a short wave before she disappeared and he turned his attention back to Clint. “I swear I didn’t mean to stay away for so long. Time works funny Below. Sometimes a day on Earth is a week Below other times weeks go by up here in just a blink in Hell. I wanted to spend all the time I could with you before you were sent Below, I was just trying to see if there was a loophole in your contract.” He stopped and slid his metal fingers under the light cotton of Clint’s t-shirt. “But I guess it was right there in front of me and I never noticed.”

Clint felt himself smile, a true and bright smile like he hadn’t managed to produce in years. “Don’t worry, James. We have all the time in the world to spend together now.”

And so they did. Together. Forever

**Author's Note:**

> So now you've reached the end. Just a few fun facts I'd like to throw out there to see if anyone caught them.
> 
> The deal Bucky was collecting on was Adam Yauch was a member of the Beastie Boys who passed away in 2012. Now, I'm not saying that he sold his soul to maintain their fame and relevancy, but I'm not not saying that.  
> Also, the song he was humming was 'No Sleep 'Till Brooklyn' which I thought was appropriate since Bucky is a Brooklynite.  
> The name of Bucky's Hound is Havoc which I stole from Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar." The line is "Cry 'Havoc!' and let slip the dogs of war" which I also thought was fitting.  
> Lastly, I'm not saying Steve Jobs is in Hell, but I'm saying I hate Apple products and their ability to shatter into a billion pieces if you breathe on them wrong....


End file.
